We knew we’d have some “breachy” news to report this month — we always do — but little did we know how much! For starters, just up the boulevard from AVPS, L.A. Valley College decided to pay out $28,000 in BitCoin for a New Year’s Eve attack where ransomware captured their computers, or more specifically, the files on them.
Category: AVP Solutions Merchant Info
Breaches Predicted; Help is Coming
The CIO website is rife with predictions on coming cyber threats and data breaches for the coming year, laid out across several different articles. In one on Five Data Breach Predictions for 2017, they list, among the quintet of threats, a “focus on payment-based attacks despite the EMV shift taking place over a year ago.”
Happy New Year! And In A Time of Breaches, “SID” Is Coming!
Of course, just because the calendar changes, that doesn’t mean the issues, ideas, and economic trends of the previous year suddenly “go away” either. Foremost among those, and something we report on often in this space, are breaches, “hacks,” and the latest frontier of data security — an area that seems like it will only get more “parlous” for those trying to safeguard sensitive,personal data, whether their own, their customers’, or both.
Post-Monday Postmortem: More Now Shopping Online
And… we’re back! Still in mid-holiday season, and yet perched between Thanksgiving and that last round of Christmas/Hanukkah/New Year celebrating.
We hope your Thanksgiving was nourishing on many levels. As for what we cover here, it seems to have been productive for businesses, too. According to CBS, “early indications are that this should be a good shopping season, with nearly 154 million people on the prowl for holiday deals during the Thanksgiving weekend, up 2 percent from last year, a National Retail Federation survey indicated
Study: Debit Cards Keep Outpacing Their Credit Counterparts
“The amount of debit cards is growing at a faster rate than that of credit cards, according to RBR’s Global Payment Cards Data and Forecasts to 2021 study,” as Business Insider reports.
Pushmi-pullyu: Payments on the Coming “Internet of Things”
The “Pushmi-pullyu” is, of course, a llama-like character from the Dr. Doolittle books and films — one with heads on either end of its body. But the legendary beast may also be a symbol of how the idea of “payments” are still sorting themselves out on the coming “internet of things.” At least, according to MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga. In comments to the Diginomica website, he said there would be “a lot of “interesting pushing and pulling over time,” as the idea of “payments” — and commerce — sorted themselves out over this expanding new network of wired-up, well, “things.”
Millennials and Credit Cards: Yes or No? Or both?
A recent New York Times piece has made some financial news, declaring that “data from the Federal Reserve indicates that the percentage of Americans under 35 who hold credit card debt has fallen to its lowest level since 1989, when the Fed began collecting data in a standardized way.”
Stealing Payment Card Data “Dead Easy;” “Quickchip” Comes to NorCal
It’s a yin/yang, up-and-down week in payment and security news. Though to be sure, the downside hasn’t been “overly” down, in terms of major breaches or security hacks (though if you have a Yahoo account, you may want to consider changing the password — again).
Scam Alert, Pt. II: How to Protect Against Skimmers
Last week, we mentioned a rash of phony invoices that are being sent by companies alleging to help with EMV upgrades, along with some preliminary advice on how to be aware of whether skimmers were being placed on the POS devices at your business.
EMV’s Slow Rollout — Viewed from the Hudson River Valley
Last spring, around this travel-y time of year, we had just gotten back from Europe, and reported from the land of EMV use (that’s where the “E” in those initials comes from!) about how customers were adapting to inserting their cards, and perhaps signing or using PINs more often.
