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.

Today, eBay announced a truly massive data breach of sensitive data on 148 million customers, making it perhaps the second largest data breach of all time, exceeded only by the 160 million records announced lost in June 2013 by a variety of companies.

On November 27th 2013, malware was first installed throughout Target's US environment, prompting what would become the second largest credit card data breach in US history. Some estimates state that at least 70M people have had their information compromised in the Target data breach, which comes out to roughly 45% of all card-holding consumers (160M) in the US. As we approach the 6 month anniversary of Target's data breach, new updates and headlines continue to emerge.

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.

Target Losses

Target's November-December data breach, at least the second largest debit and credit card compromise in history, is likely to haunt Target for a long time to come. Although some of the details are still hard to determine, we estimate losses in excess of $2.5B.

So much has happened in the Target data breach story, it's hard to keep it all straight. We've been compiling a detailed timeline of the breach, the fallout, and more details about the actual malware attack.