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Staples Inc., the largest U.S. office-supply retailer, said 1.16 million payment cards may have been affected in a series of data breaches that occurred from July into September.

The Sony Pictures web attack may have led you to question whether your own business was secure and if the information your clients provide via different payment methods can be breached, causing mistrust between business owner and vendor.

Payment processor Payza's blog suffered a Web attack on Friday, Dec. 19, though the company said the assailants did not compromise sensitive business information.

Large security incidents this year included JPMorgan Chase's August breach affecting 76 million households and seven million small businesses, Home Depot's breach of 56 million card account records it confirmed in September, and the Sony hack discovered in November, in which emails were stolen and hard drives destroyed. Here are some educated guesses about some of the security threats that will crop up next year.

Optimal Payments has released a series of onboarding and developer options in an attempt to stay nimble amid the growing market of companies that use application programming interfaces (APIs) to offer transaction capabilities to retailers.

Nearly a decade ago, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council told banks that passwords are not enough to guard financial data, and many companies scrambled to evaluate new and sometimes bizarre alternatives.

Heading into 2015, merchants weary from data breach fallout and worried about stricter PCI guidance will likely turn to third parties for payment security over a do-it-yourself approach.

Tangerine, Simple, American Express and Discover are some of the financial institutions that use Apple's Touch ID fingerprint-authentication technology to let consumers replace passwords or to add security.

In a breach incident that illustrates how long a company can do business without knowing fraudsters are potentially stealing its card data, Charge Anywhere LLC informed its merchants it has found and shut down malware that initially entered its network five years ago.

As card networks develop tokens to stand in for account numbers in online and mobile commerce, they may be able to standardize the experience across all companies that handle payments, said Mike Matan, head of global network business at American Express.