Joining the growing ranks of payments processors rolling out advanced data-encryption services to help protect cardholders at the point of sale, Elavon Inc. on June 20 announced a portfolio of products and services it has dubbed Safe-T Suite.
The services, designed to work with VeriFone Systems Inc.’s hardware-based tamper-resistant security module, protect cardholders’ peronal financial data by encrypting the information at the point of sale as it enters the payments terminal through card-network authorization, the company said in a press release.
With the product introduction, Elavon, U.S. Bancorp’s merchant-acquiring subsidiary, joins other processors that in recent months have begun 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.
Heartland Payment Systems Inc., First Data Corp., WorldPay U.S. Inc. and Vantiv LLC (formerly Fifth Third Processing Solutions) are among the processors that previously announced advanced data-encryption services.
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 Elavon press release.
Merchants also may use Safe-T Suite with Fusebox, Elevon’s hosted payments gateway to extend the service to multiple processors, Elavon said.
Along with other purveyors of such services, Elavon noted in its release that merchants using advanced data-encryption services have the potential to reduce the costs of complying with the Payment Card Industry data-security standards and application-security standards.
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 senior vice president of global marketing, told ISO&Agent Weekly 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.
Although only VeriFone’s payment terminals so far are certified for use with Safe-T Suite, Wagner emphasized that she expects other terminal makers “soon” to add models certified to work with its service.
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.
And while the service may help organizations meet stringent security standards while protecting the bottom line, it is far from the last word on the subject of security, the press release suggested.
After all, “security is a process, not a product,” Marianne Johnson, executive vice president of global product and innovation for Atlanta-based Elavon, noted in the release.
