Rippleshot Blog

A couple weeks ago, we covered the initial hearing held by the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade entitled “What are the Elements of Sound Data Breach Legislation?” The Senate is pursuing a similar path and plan to propose their own version of data breach notification legislation, which started with a hearing on February 5th initiated by the Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety, Insurance, and Data Security.

Bizrate recently released the results of their second Payment Security Study, and the results for retailers are grim. While it's been several months since a massive data breach the likes of Target or Home Depot, the residual impact of these incidents on consumer spending habits is holding strong.

At last count, 140 lawsuits were filed against Target in the wake of the massive data breach that exposed credit and debit card payment information for tens of millions of consumers in late 2013. If your head is spinning at the thought of how this will all be handled and what it means for payment security, you’re not alone. Follow along as we take a deep dive.

In the first step toward federal data breach legislation, the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade held a hearing on Tuesday entitled “What are the Elements of Sound Data Breach Legislation?” Testimony was heard by CompTIA, Acxiom, The Retail Industry Leaders Association and the Cumberland School of Law in the first of what we can assume will be many steps to drive toward a single national breach notification requirement.

During a speech at the Federal Trade Commission on Monday, President Obama outlined his plans on attacking several cybersecurity issues, including a legislative proposal to help protect the millions of Americans whose personal information has been compromised as a result of a data breach.

In a year of broad-ranging and publicly damaging corporate data breaches, the malware attack on Sony Pictures Entertainment joins the ranks of companies like Home Depot, JP Morgan and eBay who suffered incredible losses at the hand of deft cyber-attackers.

Here’s the timeline of everything we've learned so far:

What a year it has been for data security. Earlier this month, CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Bill Whitaker deemed 2014 “the year of the data breach,” and we find it hard to disagree. Kicked off by the mega-breach at Target at the close of the year prior, 2014 saw large-scale data breaches at many well-known companies such as Michaels, P.F. Changs, Home Depot and Jimmy John’s. Did the industry see the tidal wave coming? We take a look back at last year’s predictions and what made an impact in 2014.

It’s certainly starting to feel like the discussion is less about if retailers are going to suffer from a data breach, but when. According to USA Today, over 40% of companies had a data breach in the past year, which is up 10% over the year prior. We all know the best defense is a good offense, but with no singular silver bullet solution to stop data breaches, many retailers are relying on cyber insurance to protect themselves. Is it enough? We take a look..

In hindsight, many big-time security breaches appear as if they were bound to happen. Home Depot, for example, was following a number of poor practices before it suffered a major breach earlier this summer. According to an article in the New York Times, the hardware and home improvement giant was using antivirus software from 2007, wasn't continuously monitoring the network for suspicious behavior and its vulnerability scans were few and far between. In fact, only a handful of stores even received such service. These were all factors that led to the incident where over 50 million customers were likely compromised following months of fraudulent activity.

We are very excited to announce that Rippleshot has been named one of ten up-and-coming financial technology solutions providers by American Banker and BAI.

Don't look now, but the holiday shopping season is right around the corner. As we get into November, we are only four weeks away from Thanksgiving weekend, the unofficial start of the season, although if you were to visit a local mall today you would likely find several holiday-themed decorations hanging in various retail stores. As a consumer, you probably don't like being reminded of Christmas that early in the year, but it does show how seriously many retailers take the season. It's a genuine opportunity for organizations to increase revenue and meet their goals by the end of the year. Of course, that's contingent on merchants making the most of the season by ensuring they maximize revenue. This year, retailers hope to increase performance by tightening their security on customer information.

We're thrilled to announce that out of 552 nominees, Rippleshot was chosen as one of ten "Up-and-Comer" winners at this year's Chicago Innovations Awards, held last night at the Harris Theater with nearly 1500 business and civic leaders attending.

A study released by CreditCards.com and Princeton Survey Research on Monday found that 45% of cardholders surveyed would likely avoid their regular stores during the holiday shopping season if the retailer had recently experienced a data breach.

It’s been nearly one full year since Target lost 40 million bank cards to hackers, and credit card breaches continue to plague the financial industry. At FinovateSpring, Rippleshot debuted its comprehensive set of tools for large issuers to combat data breaches, but this fall the team set its eyes on designing a tool specifically for regional banks and credit unions - Rippleshot Community.