On July 31, the Department of Homeland Security, along with the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, the Secret Service, issued an alert, warning retailers across the United States of a new strain of malware dubbed "Backoff" and the devastating effects it can have if cybercriminals gain unauthorized access via this malicious software. As far as security experts know, the malicious software that played a part in the data breaches at Target, Supervalu, UPS stores, and recently Kmart has also affected over 1,000 American businesses.

We've put together the latest data breach news for the week of August 18, 2014:

On July 16th, the MWAA hostedthe 4th annual Shark Attack Innovation competition at their annual MWAA conference in Lombard, IL. This year’s contestants included Textel, VisitBasis, DMI and Rippleshot. Rippleshot, a cloud-based big-data analytics software company that detects databreaches faster by monitoring merchants and the payment network, was announced as the winner of the MWAA 2014 Shark Attack Innovation competition. The program included a 10 minute presentation, followed by Q&A from the Shark Attack panel of judges. Judges rated the finalists on the following criteria:

Today, United Parcel Service Inc. (UPS) said a breach of its computer systems occurred, potentially exposing customers’ personal and payment data across the United States. A spokeswoman for UPS, Chelsea Lee, said that the company found malware at 51 locations in 24 states and that the company began investigations into its computer systems on July 31st.

Over the last 7 years, there have been over 50 data breaches across the globe with at least 1 million records affected per data breach. We've compiled a list of 53 (and growing) data breaches from major organizations including eBay, AOL, Facebook, Experian, Evernote and Target. A recent Ponemon Institute study estimates that nearly 110 million U.S adults have had their personal data compromised in the last 12 months. Organizations across the globe have to start asking WHEN they will breached, not IF.

Rippleshot, a cloud-based big-data analytics software company that detects data breaches sooner by monitoring merchants and the payment network, has been selected as one of over 70 innovators to demo at FinovateSpring 2014 on April 29th and 30th in San Jose, California.

For ATMs, the switch to a newer OS is slow and tedious On April 8th, Microsoft will be ending all support for Windows XP, its 13-year-old operating system for both consumers and businesses. Microsoft has discontinued service for XP for all consumer machines. However, almost all ATMs (roughly 95%) are still operating on Windows XP.

Data Breaches: Winning the "War" in Google Trends

If you were to ask Google to find everything there is to know about data breaches five years ago, you’d be surprised at how different the amount of results would vary compared to now. For those not familiar with Google Trends, Google analyzes a certain percentage of its web searches to determine how many searches have been done for whatever term/s that have been entered.

In the final piece of our article on EMV technology and chip and PIN cards, we're going to explain why these "smart cards" will help reduce fraud but are not the key to stopping all fraud. Basically, fraud types will shift and fraudsters will improve their fraud techniques.

When the dust finally settles, where does everyone stand?

It’s been nearly two decades since the idea of making the switch to EMV was first brought to people’s attention in the United States. With all the recent data breaches involving retailers, government agencies, healthcare providers and educational institutions, the US finally has the political will to make this change.

What Is EMV (aka Chip and PIN)?

When you see the words “chip technology”, they’re talking about credit and debit cards with an embedded microchip that contains unique cardholder information, including the cardholder’s name, card number and expiration date. Instead of swiping your magnetic stripe card and signing to authenticate, the new point-of-sale (POS) machines will read the chip on the card and then ask the cardholder to enter a PIN code to authenticate. Replicating the chip itself is far more difficult than replicating traditional magnetic stripe data, making card duplication much harder.

The last few weeks are filled with reports on recent data breaches and how politicians and industry leaders in Washington want to change how data security regulation must be implemented. But how bad is the problem, really?

CEO Interviewed on CBS 2 Chicago

Rippleshot CEO, Canh Tran, was interviewed on Tuesday, Feb 17th on CBS 2 Chicago. Check out the clips for details about how 1871 has helped our company succeed.