Joining the growing raft of processors offering advanced data-encryption services to help protect card data at the point of sale, Elavon Inc. has introduced a portfolio of products and services it calls Safe-T Suite.
The recent spate of data-breaches originating with merchants such as Sony Corp. and Michaels Stores Inc. may help drive heightened interest in data protection from a growing number of organizations, Michelle Wagner, Elavon's senior vice president of global marketing, said in an interview.
"Major national retailers may already have advanced services to protect card data, but large numbers of operators in the restaurant industry, hospitality and smaller retail channels lack strong data protection, and we see a lot of interest in those sectors," Wagner said.
Elavon's services, designed to work with VeriFone Inc.'s tamper-resistant security hardware, protect cardholder data by encrypting the information at the point it enters the payment terminal through card-network authorization, Elavon said in its Monday announcement.
Elavon, U.S. Bancorp's merchant-acquiring subsidiary, joins various other processors that in recent months began selling such advanced data-encryption services to merchants as an add-on to existing offerings to help prevent criminals from intercepting sensitive cardholder data during the payment process.
Other processors that also offer advanced data-encryption services include Heartland Payment Systems Inc., First Data Corp., WorldPay U.S. Inc. and Vantiv LLC (formerly Fifth Third Processing Solutions).
Although only VeriFone's payment terminals so far are certified for use with Safe-T Suite, Wagner said she expects other terminal makers "soon" to add models certified to work with its service.
Safe-T Suite also includes a data-tokenization service, enabling merchants to create a unique identifier to protect stored cardholder data used in subsequent transactions, according to the press release.
Merchants also may use Safe-T Suite with Fusebox, Elavon's hosted payment gateway to extend the service to multiple processors, Elavon said.
Developed over several months, Safe-T Suite is designed to "help companies protect data at every point in the transaction lifecycle: in use, in transit and at rest," Elavon said in its release.
As with other purveyors of such services, Elavon said that merchants using advanced data-encryption services potentially may reduce their costs associated with Payment Card Industry data- and application-security compliance.
And while the suite may help organizations meet stringent security standards while protecting the bottom line, "security is a process, not a product," Marianne Johnson, Elavon's executive vice president of global product and innovation, said in the release.
