Payment Security For Merchants: How To Beef Up Your Systems
As the IoT (Internet of Things) continues to monopolise eCommerce, online payment security has become a vital matter of consequence as we move deeper and deeper into this space commercially. As sophisticated as our website-based enterprises may get, be sure that it is matched every step of the way by the new breed of fraudsters skilled at leeching our profits. It’s the proverbial ‘cloak and dagger’, ‘smoke and mirrors’, ‘cops and robbers’ game all over again, just in a new guise.
That never stopped anyone trading before. The business wheel grinds on regardless. But it does mean that we cannot afford to be lax when it comes to something like payment security. Don’t be tempted just to leave it all to the experts you hired to host you or those cyber masters who have you safe and sound in the cloud.
The buck starts and stops with us. We can become sufficiently informed of the risks involved in transactions using the World Wide Web.
Payment Security Risks
According to SABRIC (South African Banking Risk Information Centre), credit card fraud saw a one percent increase in 2017, which translates into a whopping R436.7m, with the trend expected to continue through till this year; which it no doubt did. Hundreds of thousands of credit card numbers have been wrongfully procured and readily sold on the dark web.
Identify, identify, identify is the common cry in the attempt to halt the internet fraud Tsunami.
But in a modern world where social media dominates, it is possible for talented fraudsters to learn enough about a person to beat the traditional knowledge-based authentication payment security systems.
The Rise of the Dark Side
We all know that eCommerce giants like Global Payments, Experian and Lexis Nexis have been the target of criminal masterminds. Organised crime both steal and sell their ill-gotten gains within these forums using underground marketplaces. CAPTCHA has basically been captured – a worthy pun, by the dark side – its weak identification system is now hopelessly outdated.
If we don’t understand how criminals are using the Shadow Internet, we are already too far behind. The payment marketplace is a veritable reservoir for the dark web. Payment security notwithstanding, they steal from these abundant oases of PII (personally identifiable information) and credit card information. The pressure on payment processors to ensure payment security is immense and they are going to have to think like the criminals they’re trying to beat in order to succeed.
Countering DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attacks only takes general cyber-savvy techniques but account takeover is the big daddy. That requires protection in the exact space organised crime seeks to commander – User verification and identity management.
How Huge Connect Can Help
Huge Connect has not been caught napping when it comes to the hot issue of payment security. Taking their GSM (Global System for Mobile Communications) Data Services into high gear so they facilitate fail-over access to xDSL (sum total of Digital Subscriber Line), Fibre or Satellite.
Mindful of reducing costs, user-defined restrictions apply, defining the data permitted to fail-over.
Huge Connect’s PCI (Payment Card Industry) certification is supported by a cutting-edge on-premise POS (Point of Sale) Communications Link Solution against the PCI DSS (Data Security Standards), via the Huge Connect network to the banks on the data-link layer. This magnificent cyber schematic in the interests of payment security suitably scrambles criminal intentions while at the same time, Huge Connect does not play any role in the encryption/decryption key management process and can therefore at no time access cardholder data. Huge Connect also does not store or process any cardholder data.
The bottom line is that Huge Connect understand the attack vectors and using predictive intelligence approach, keep ahead of the tide to research cyber adversaries. There are legitimate ways to enhance payment security even if it means exploring the dark side where cybercrime operates. Besides ensuring your hosting provider has state-of-the-art- safeguards in place, merchants need to use VPN (Virtual Private Network) updated security software and browsers the chances are that those of ill-intent will look for easier targets.
If truth be told, the critical issue of payment security is being sorely neglected by those who are lost in a kind-of numbers-rush where all they care about is grabbing as many customers as they can and worrying about security risk after the fact. This is providing a huge window of opportunity for dark web enterprises who have been at their game for over a decade and never miss a gap. Only fools don’t shore up their defences.
Huge Connect is here so that you don’t inadvertently offer criminals what they’re after on a plate.
