Data security

Mobile payments technology has fallen short of expectations in major markets, particularly the U.S., where less than 10 percent of consumers routinely use devices to pay in stores — despite more than four years of aggressive development from large technology companies and banks.

The Marriott incident will open the door to loyalty program fraud, account takeover and myriad other risks, writes Michael Reitblat, co-founder and CEO of Forter.

Even the best technologies take time, making it necessary to rein in expectations about what will happen and won't happen in the coming year.

Plaid, which moves consumer data between financial institutions and fintechs, could expand overseas as part of a broad growth plan, according to a venture investor.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee concluded that last year’s massive data breach at Equifax was fully preventable, but stopped short of recommending new laws aimed at averting future hacks. Democrats called the final report a “missed opportunity.”

Familiar recriminations and calls for legislation from lawmakers followed the massive hack of the Starwood hotel chain, but will Capitol Hill actually do anything?

The first wave of data from this year's holiday shopping season is in, providing insights into where the biggest fraud threats are likely to originate in the final weeks of the year.

It’s too soon for Marriott International Inc. to estimate the cost of the massive cyber breach that the company disclosed last week, and other companies that have suffered big attacks are imperfect proxies, said Chief Financial Officer Leeny Oberg at an investor conference today.

Since banks are under constant attack by hackers, the startup XM Cyber is offering them a simulator that seeks to do its virtual worst in order to prevent a real breach.

Consumers are stuck using outdated or easily compromised means of proving their identities in a world where banks and retailers need something better. Mastercard and Microsoft are teaming up to take on this monumental challenge.

Bluefin Payment Systems is rolling out a service to simplify compliance tasks for merchants that have adopted point-to-point encryption (P2PE) services to protect card data at every stage of the transaction.

Businesses need to prove that they have taken all possible actions to inform and mitigate the damage during an event, writes Ryan Wilk, vice president of customer success for NuData Security, a Mastercard company.

U.S. banks and other financial firms are projecting higher spending on cybersecurity as they face bigger threats and more attacks.

An invisible payment becomes a lot more visible when it’s compromised, making Marriott’s data breach a threat to one of the most important innovations in retail, which should scare everyone from Uber to Amazon.

Marriott International Inc. said it’s investigating a hack of the guest reservation database at its Starwood unit that may be one of the biggest such breaches in corporate history. Marriott shares slumped 5.6 percent in pre-market trading.

Phishing is a serious and growing problem in the financial services and payments industries, creating pressure to come up with advanced detection techniques, according to Adrien Gendre, chief solutions architect for Vade Secure.

The comments by Brent McIntosh, Treasury's general counsel, are at odds with concerns by state regulators and consumer groups who fear that a national standard on how firms handle data breaches could weaken pre-existing rules.

The continued trend of “spear phishing” and “catfishing” only serves to highlight the complex work required to identify genuine from fraudulent, writes Steven Goddard, product manager for risk at The ai Corporation (ai).

There's never a good time to expose customer data, but the incident Amazon disclosed Wednesday could upend two major events: Black Friday/Cyber Monday and a reported effort to get merchants to accept Amazon at the point of sale.

Across all age groups, many consumers still prefer shopping in stores for various reasons. But even when going into a brick-and-mortar store, these consumers don't leave their digital habits behind; many still prefer to pay by mobile or wearable when the option presents itself.