'The twentieth century U.S. criminal Willie Sutton was said to rob banks because “that’s where the money is.” The same motivation in our digital age makes merchants the new target for financial fraud. Occasionally lax security by some merchants enables criminals to easily steal and use personal consumer financial information from payment card transactions and processing systems.

It’s a serious problem – more than 234 million records with sensitive information have been breached since January 2005, according to Privacy Rights Clearinghouse.org. As a merchant, you are at the center of payment card transactions so it is imperative that you use standard security procedures and technologies to thwart theft of cardholder data. .

Merchant-based vulnerabilities may appear almost anywhere in the card-processing ecosystem including point-of-sale devices; personal computers or servers; wireless hotspots or Web shopping applications; in paper-based storage systems; and unsecured transmission of cardholder data to service providers. Vulnerabilities may even extend to systems operated by service providers and acquirers, which are the financial institutions that initiate and maintain the relationships with merchants that accept payment cards.'

Source: PCI Security Standards organisation

 

So what does all this mean for you? It means that as a merchant you need to protect yourself and your customers from fraudulent activities by ensuring your systems are PCI compliant.

 

This is where MICROS can help. To find out if your systems are PCI compliant, contact your local MICROS-Fidelio office.

You can also access more detailed technical information on MICROS Information Security compliance by clicking here.