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Target Corp. issued another update on the breach of its point-of-sale systems saying that phishers are using the incident to trick consumers into revealing sensitive information. The basic modus operandi of phishers is to send mass emails in the name of a financial institution or other company to consumers, asking them …
Read More »Target Talks With Attorneys General; Says Malware Was Involved in Data Breach
Target Corp. on Monday held a conference call with state attorneys general and said malware was involved in its data breach that compromised up to 40 million credit and debit card accounts. The new developments follow the discount-store chain’s disclosure Thursday of a breach in the point-of-sale system for its …
Read More »Target Says Little Fraud And No Apparent PIN Theft Resulting From Data Breach So Far
In the wake of the huge payment card data breach it confirmed Thursday, big-box retailer Target Corp. today said that so far it has received few reports of fraud resulting from the breach. The retailer also said that while hackers obtained considerable customer data on approximately 40 million credit and …
Read More »Payment Card Data Hackers Put Big-Box Retailer Target in Their Cross-Hairs
It had been fairly quiet on the retailer data-breach front for quite some time until Wednesday, when news broke that Target Corp. had suffered what apparently was a major breach of magnetic-stripe data from payment cards. Target confirmed Thursday that the breach potentially compromised 40 million credit and debit accounts, …
Read More »Rising with Holiday Shopping, Chargebacks Are on the Naughty List for Most Merchants
Chargebacks may not be lumps of coal, but many merchants may consider them as such this holiday season. n Chargebacks are the process by which cardholders contest charges they didn’t make or don’t recognize when they receive their statement. A chargeback filing typically requires a merchant to dig up supporting …
Read More »Interchange Relief And Other Carrots Needed To Spur U.S. EMV Conversion, Analyst Says
Europay-MasterCard-Visa (EMV) chip cards will come to the U.S., but probably not before the payment card networks postpone current deadlines and offer strong incentives for merchants that might include interchange relief and dumping the signature as a cardholder- verification method, according to a new research report from Celent LLC. Card …
Read More »Survey Revealing Undisclosed Intrusions Indicates Data Breaches Are Under-Reported
The actual number of data breaches taking place in the United States may be much higher than generally understood, if a recent survey of corporate security professionals is any indication. The canvass of some 200 so-called malware analysts working for large and small enterprises revealed that fully 57% have dealt …
Read More »Despite Signs of Progress, Small Merchants Still Lag on Risk Assessment And PCI
Coming on the heels of the release last week by the PCI Security Standards Council of a revised Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) is a report Tuesday that shows how much progress small merchants are making in locking down card data—and how painfully slow much of that progress has …
Read More »NACHA Proposals for Reducing Exceptions Include New Fines for Sloppy and Risky Originators
In an effort to reduce the volume of returned transactions and motivate banks to crack down on originators of incorrect or risky automated clearing house payments, ACH network governing body NACHA today proposed two new rules to improve transaction quality. One would set new fines that the network could assess …
Read More »The PCI Council Unveils Its ‘User-Friendly’ Version 3.0 of the PCI Security Rules
Better management of passwords and prevention of point-of-sale terminal tampering are just two features of the new Version 3.0 of the Payment Card Industry data-security standard that the PCI Security Standards Council unveiled Thursday. On its surface, Version 3.0 looks much the same as the previous edition, 2.0, which the …
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