Data security

Facing security challenges at its member banks and competition from other tech providers, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication [Swift] plans to put its best foot forward in 2017.

Online shoppers can expect fraudsters to be at the height of their creativity during the 2016 holiday season.

By making tokenization available on each other's digital wallets, Visa and Mastercard are addressing the security concerns of merchants who are happy to accept both brands but nervous about how their wallets can be misused.

In response to a series of cyber bank thefts, Swift has developed new guidance. It's a necessary first step, though banks for now are still left to fend for themselves.

Yahoo! Inc. disclosed a second major security breach that may have affected more than 1 billion users, another blow to the company's reputation as it nears the sale of its main web businesses to Verizon Communications Inc.

Russian authorities have handed over an American fugitive who the U.S. accuses of conspiring to organize the largest known cyber attack on Wall Street, according to people familiar with the matter, resolving months of negotiations at a moment of high tension over hacking between Moscow and Washington.

As online shopping and card fraud increase, startups offering easy-to-use “burner” cards could see strong traction.

As online shopping and card fraud increase, startups offering easy-to-use "burner" cards could see strong traction.

Both major brands are accelerating a move away from traditional checkout, and all retailers need to make adjustments for the future.

Merchants should check operating systems, since the PC-based operating systems which run most legacy point of sale software have security flaws and are targets for malware.

The payments messaging network Swift has told its client banks that the threat of cyberattacks "is very persistent, adaptive and sophisticated — and it is here to stay."

The payments messaging network Swift has told its client banks that the threat of cyberattacks "is very persistent, adaptive and sophisticated — and it is here to stay."

Banks and data aggregators agree that screen scraping is a practice probably best left behind. In the coming year, the two might get better at sharing data via APIs.

Too many data breach reports show that companies suffering compromises were unaware that cardholder data was present in their systems. The Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council wants to fix this.

Crooks are getting more clever when hacking e-commerce sites to hide illegal activity, requiring banks and processors to developer a broader picture of merchants and payment activity.

Mobile payment initiatives have largely failed because they focus on changing transactions instead of changing the way consumers and merchants engage with each other, according to Carta Worldwide, which touts new tokens as a way to reverse that.

When BankMobile, the brainchild of Jay Sidhu and his daughter Luvleen, relaunches on a new platform in January, security — especially for the onboarding process — will be completely redesigned.

In short order, Mastercard, Visa and now Amex have made rapid strikes designed to not only bolster identity protection for online commerce, but to make that protection nearly invisible to the consumer.

The opening of the 2016 holiday season, which marks the first full year since the country's major EMV fraud liability shift, is proving what data security experts feared all along.

Much like rival Mastercard, which recently took its Decision Intelligence AI product out of pilot, Visa wants to make sure that it isn't turning away legitimate customers when it finds signs of potential fraud.