Rippleshot Blog

Only two months into 2016, and the Identity Theft Resource Center is reporting nearly 1.7 million records have been exposed in data breaches thus far. And as we noted in last week’s newsletter, an increasing concern in the security space is the inevitable increase in card-not-present fraud, as e-commerce numbers continue to skyrocket and EMV adoption pushes fraudsters online. With e-commerce fraud at the top of everyone’s minds, Experian released a new report outlining the riskiest locations in the United States - both where the fraudsters are located, and where their victims are.

For thousands of years, humans have created secret codes to protect important information from others. Military secrets, formulas to create goods like silk, and personal information are seen throughout history as being masked to communicate so unintended recipients could not read the message.  There are two main ways to communicate information in secret; tokenization and encryption. The terms tokenization and encryption are often interchanged, yet they actually have very specific definitions. Let’s dig in deeper to find out more about the differences between the two.

We’ve long covered the issues with gas pump skimmers, and have consistently seen automated fuel dispensers (MCC 5542) show up in the most compromised merchant categories. But this history, combined with the extended deadline for gas stations to become EMV compliant, has led to them being an even bigger and easier target for hackers.

According to IT Governance, over 57 million records were exposed worldwide in data breaches in January of this year alone. The attacks are far from slowing down, but with the help of Palo Alto Networks and Ponemon’s most recent report, we are learning more about how hackers work, who they target and why.

As the payments ecosystem continues to evolve and improve through new innovation, consumers are looking for easier, faster and more convenient methods to conduct transactions. 

Everyone knows the holiday season is ripe for card fraud. A survey of Certified Fraud Examiners found that fraud increases 20% during the holidays, accounting for 2.5% of all sales. We talked a few weeks ago about how issuers and merchants are attempting to tackle online fraud, but we’re seeing even more aggressive tactics this holiday season - and the impact on consumer spend is severe.