Payments providers are increasingly resuming business-as-usual as the pandemic eases, but so are criminals. Losses from identity-fraud schemes, in which fraudsters use stolen payment credentials for their own gain, soared 79% last year to $24 billion, according to a study released Tuesday by Javelin Strategy & Research. Moreover, this so-called …

The past two years have seen merchants become frequent targets of ransomware attacks, largely due to their weaker cybersecurity practices. The threat only promises to get worse. For cybercriminals, ransomware attacks are easy money. To cash in, hackers need only plant malware on a target’s network to gain entry. Once …

With ransomware attacks showing no signs of slowing down, the National Cybersecurity Alliance and the PCI Security Standards Council issued a joint warning bulletin Thursday. The bulletin was prompted by feedback from payment industry stakeholders and heightened news coverage of the attacks throughout 2021, says the PCI SSC.  In 2021, …

With the Covid-19 pandemic helping fuel broad adoption of Quick Response codes by merchants for payments and ordering, it was only a matter of time before criminals exploited the contactless technology. Fraudsters are creating fake QR codes that, when scanned, take consumers to a bogus landing page that collects payment …

Data-compromise incidents hit an all-time high in 2021, totaling 1,862, up 23% from the previous record high of 1,506 in 2017, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center’s Annual Data Breach Report. On a year-over-year basis, the number of the compromises increased 68% in 2021, compared to 2020. The number …

The switchover of gasoline stations in the United States to the EMV chip card standard has been a work in progress, but now products are emerging that can secure card data at the pump through a technology known as point-to-point encryption. Payments provider ACI Worldwide Inc. early Tuesday said it …

As data compromises of various sorts continue to threaten the security of digital payments, the Accredited Standards Committee X9 Inc. this week issued a standard it says covers both data protection and breach notification. The new standard, “Financial and Personal Data Protection and Breach Notification,” also known as X9.141, is …

Everyone has heard of Amazon, but there’s less talk about Canada’s Shopify Inc., even though the fast-growing, Ottawa-based commerce platform now ranks second to Amazon in share of retail e-commerce sales, with 8.6% versus 39% for the Seattle-based giant, according to eMarketer. On Wednesday, Shopify issued an update on just …

The attack on TSYS last December was a sobering reminder of the vulnerability of payments companies to this insidious fraud. But there are steps you can take to protect your network. Criminals are businessmen, too, which is why they are always looking for ways to maximize the return on their …

Stolen data presents a burden to the thief. He needs to bring it to market, find a buyer, and compete with other hackers. Ransomware gains, by contrast, are paid in a lump sum by the victim, the money is Bitcoin-protected, and any other data crime can be executed on top …