Data security

Gasoline retailers have three years to upgrade their pumps to accept EMV chip-based payment cards, but most are having a difficult time convincing themselves the cost to do so will be worth it.

Apple Pay couldn’t have arrived at a better time; security breaches in major retailers appear almost daily in the news, and consumers are looking for a more secure way to pay. And while Apple Pay may address that need for many, there are still potential security breaches.

MasterCard now offers an anti-fraud tool called SafetyNet, designed to protect banks and payment processors against hackers.

The recent exploit of Signature Systems terminals, used by Jimmy John's restaurants and other clients, shows that the point of sale is still a key target for hackers. And the addition of EMV-chip technology won't scare them off.

Techniques used to fund terrorism and launder money evolve rapidly. At the moment, new payment methods, specific conventional banking areas and even charities and non-profit organizations are all targets for launderers.

Capital One's new Capital One Wallet is a cardholder app for Apple's devices that uses an Android-like pattern-recognition feature for authentication.

We usually think of card fraud as hurting just the merchant who accepts the card, but when one merchant accepts payment from a stolen card it hurts other merchants.

The data breach affecting 216 of Jimmy John's restaurant locations had, at its source, an increasingly common exploit: remote-access passwords.

Even though the U.S. has suffered a flood of retail data breaches, the payments industry has to take a global view of any security measures it adopts.

The payments industry has turned its attention inward, focusing on securing its own technology from fraudsters without driving off their customers.

Apple, Samsung, PayPal, Square, Google Wallet among others along with countless financial institutions and retailers are fiercely marketing their applications to enable mobile payments.

Jimmy John's, a sandwich-shop chain based in Champaign, Illinois, said a hacker infiltrated payment systems at about 216 of its locations and stole credit- and debit-card information.

Fifty-two percent of millennial respondents in a Zogby Analytics survey sponsored by Mitek Systems, a mobile imaging tech provider, perceive native apps as a safer solution than mobile websites for purchasing and banking.

News of a data breach at Home Depot stores throughout the U.S. and Canada is compounding fears on the part of card holders that “big box” and other retailers can do little to protect them from credit and debit card fraud.

The payments industry has changed dramatically over the past year, and so has the mindset of those in the industry. The focus is shifting from mobile payments and Bitcoin to fraud mitigation and security.

Just a few days after debuting on Wall Street with one of the biggest initial public offerings to hit the U.S. market, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holdings has joined the Fast IDentity Online board.

Banks must take the time to educate mid-size business clients about how to defend themselves against hackers, Javelin Strategy & Research says.

Were the Home Depot and Target breaches the work of the same attackers? Only a few people seem to be in a position to know, and so far, they aren’t telling. However, we can still learn a lot from the similarity of the incidents.

Though Home Depot's recent data breach compromised 56 million payment cards — more than the 40 million in Target's incident — the company isn't predicting a hit to revenue and investors have been unfazed by the attack.

Device manufacturers and banks come to Trustwave for a glimpse at how criminals would exploit the technology they use.