Merchants and financial institutions will find their information-protection practices under intense scrutiny this week in Washington, where no fewer than four Senate and House of Representatives hearings are scheduled in the wake of payment card data breaches at Target Corp., Neiman Marcus Group and other merchants. The sessions kick off …

Seemingly confirming predictions from law enforcement and data-security executives in private industry that more data breaches beyond the recent ones at Target Corp. and Neiman Marcus Group are coming, arts-and-crafts retailer Michaels Stores on Saturday warned that “we may have experienced a data-security attack.” Plano, Texas-based Michaels alerted consumers to …

Target Corp. on Friday said personal data on 70 million customers were compromised in a separate theft during the same data breach it disclosed last month that exposed up to 40 million credit and debit card accounts of U.S. shoppers. That could bring the total number of customers affected up …

A Look Back And a Provocative Look Ahead Welcome to an anniversary party— one played out not in a ballroom or country-club drawing room but in pages of cold print. The milestone we are marking is our 10th anniversary of publishing Digital Transactions, an enterprise we rather immodestly think of …

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, …

Last spring, Verizon Communications Inc. issued its latest report on data breaches, reporting that in 2012 there had been 621 such compromises involving 44.8 million records. But now it turns out that there may have been many more breaches than Verizon or anyone else can count. That’s because these uncounted …

If a recently released annual survey is any indication, small merchants remain unconvinced they are vulnerable to data breaches, pay far too little attention to security, and regard PCI simply as a cost item. “We still see drastic deficiencies in the number of merchants who think they’re at risk,” says …

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 …

Jim Daly Data-breach insurance has become a mainstream product in the merchant-acquiring business, but some executives say PCI compliance and diligent security practices negate the need to buy coverage. What’s next? The unnerving reality that credit and debit card-accepting merchants and their processors can have their computer systems hacked spawned …

By Jim Daly The coming update to the Payment Card Industry data-security standard (PCI) will include new guidelines about physically protecting credit and debit card terminals, when third-party vendors share security responsibilities with merchants, protecting card data in a computer system’s short-term memory, and strengthening passwords, among others. The PCI …