The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) has released an infographic breaking down how the recent high-profile security breaches have occurred, and how merchants both large and small can mitigate the risk of being hacked.
With the EMV shift set for October 2015, hackers are in a feeding frenzy and throwing all their efforts into taking advantage of the current vulnerabilities at the point-of-sale of merchants and retailers.
However, EMV upgrades and tokenization is not enough, and though businesses must upgrade their POS or face being liable for breaches, they should strongly consider another solution.
What can businesses do to protect themselves, and what security solutions should the payments industry look to implement?
According to the PCI SSC, some important takeaways include:
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- Malware infections at the point of sale caused the majority of data breaches.
- Hackers do not discriminate with targets in regards to business size.
- Up-to-date anti-virus software can help prevent malware infection.
- Implement and properly secure stronger passwords.
- EMV (and tokenization) will soon become industry standards, but they may not be enough to prevent malware-based data breaches.
- PCI Validated Point-to-point encryption may become increasingly critical to implement for a layered security approach.