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No Sweat, My Robot Will Pay Gideon Samid • Gideon@BitMint.com The decision to purchase and pay is quintessentially human, or so we believe today. Computers account for decision-support data, convenient payment-handling devices, and automated accounting. But the pivotal determination to actually make a payment remains in the unchallenged human domain, …
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Not Content Targeting Financial Services, Phishers Widen Attacks to New Brands
Online fraudsters are attacking a much wider variety of brands, including grocery stores and Bitcoin exchanges, showing a growing level of sophistication in their efforts to gull unsuspecting customers out of their money, according to the latest quarterly report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group Inc., an 11-year-old organization made up …
Read More »The Gimlet Eye: Data Security’s Weak Link
When the payments industry broke out with a rash of data breaches in December, pundits and politicians were quick to blame technical factors such as the deliberate pace at which the industry is adopting chip cards. Why hasn’t the U.S. replaced its mag stripes with EMV chips, the cry went …
Read More »Target Clarifies Number of Consumers Affected by Breach, Claims Data Security Improving
Target Corp. told a U.S. Senate committee Wednesday that the overlap in the number of consumers affected by the two-headed monster of its data breach may be 12 million or more. The nation’s No. 2 general retailer also said it is improving its data security in the wake of the …
Read More »Banks Sue Trustwave, Target’s PCI Services Provider Before the Retailer’s Data Breach
Trustwave Holdings Inc., the leading provider of Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) services to merchants, on Monday became the target of a lawsuit arising from the massive data breach at Target Corp. The suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Chicago by two banks, claims negligence on the part …
Read More »Smucker’s Hacked E-Commerce Site To Reopen Soon; Sally Beauty Confirms Breach
The J.M. Smucker Co.’s online store is expected to reopen next week, nearly a month after the jam-and-jelly producer closed it after discovering that hackers had broken into its computer system and stolen payment card data and other personal information on up to 23,000 customers. In other data-security news, beauty …
Read More »Two More Data Breaches, But Little Concern by Small Businesses for Card Security
Given the massive news coverage about payment card security since December in the wake of Target Corp.’s huge data breach and other ones at Neiman Marcus Group and Michaels, you might think that data protection is top of mind among small-business owners. Not so, according to results of a new …
Read More »Security Notes: Security Newton, Cyber Oppenheimer
Gideon Samid • Gideon@BitMint.com In a presentation for Congressional leaders in the office of Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., I flashed a slide entitled “This Requires Action.” This was the historic phrase uttered by President Franklin Roosevelt to Gen. Edwin M. Watson, his military adviser, while passing on to Watson Einstein’s …
Read More »Neiman Marcus Downsizes by Two-Thirds Its Tally of Cards Compromised in Breach
In a rare piece of good, or least not as bad, news about the recent retailer payment card data breaches, upscale department-store chain Neiman Marcus Group says about 350,000 cards were compromised by the breach it disclosed in January, down from its earlier estimate of 1.1 million. The number of …
Read More »Target Passed a PCI Inspection Before Breach; Will Spend $100 Million on Chip Card Effort
Target Corp. said on Tuesday that it passed its latest Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) inspection a mere three months before confirming in December that a data breach compromised 40 million customers’ payment card numbers. Target also said it is fast-tracking its efforts to roll out chip card acceptance …
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