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- February 7, 2007: New Techniques for Guarding Financial Data
- February 6, 2007: Increased Scrutiny From Card Associations in 2007
- January 28, 2007: The State of PCI Compliance 2007
- January 23, 2007: Background Checks on IT Personnel
- January 5, 2007: 100 Million Notifications of Data Breaches in US
- December 17, 2006: Inside Jobs: The Risk of Data Breach From Insider Threats
- December 12, 2006: Card Associations Step Up PCI Enforcement
- December 1, 2006: CompTIA Survey Emphasizes Importance of Security Training
- December 1, 2006: CompTIA Survey Emphasizes Importance of Security Training
- November 16, 2006: Average data breach costs $5 million
Credit Card Companies
FAQ
Helpful Sites
Visa Issues Alert and Steps Up PCI Enforcement
Visa, in conjunction with the US Chamber of Commerce, has published an alert that identifies the leading causes of data breaches. Full details can be found at the Chamber’s website. The five leading causes of card-related breaches are:
1) Storage of mag stripe data
2) Missing or outdated security patches
3) Use of vendor supplied default settings and passwords
4) SQL injection
5) Unnecessary and vulnerable services on servers
Also, the GreenSheet recently reported that Visa has increased its efforts to enforce compliance with PCI standards. The article states that all Level 1 merchants were required to validate compliance by Sept. 30, and that there are approximately 20 level 1 merchants that are currently subject to fines ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 PER MONTH for failure to comply.
In the October issue of Transaction World magazine, Michael E. Smith, Senior Vice President of Enterprise Risk and Compliance for Visa USA, has published an article entitled Targeting the Main Source of Cardholder Data Breaches. He cautions that “…some payment applications may inadvertently store prohibited, sensitive cardholder information,” creating a situation where merchants don’t even realize that they have a security risk. He also advises that merchants should check the list of PABP (Payment Application Best Practices) validated products on Visa’s site at www.visa.com/cisp. And he emphatically states that “Visa expects all payment application vendors to adhere to the PABP.” This article is one of the most direct declarations that I have seen of Visa’s intent to make PABP mandatory for all payment applications.