Rippleshot Blog

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.

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.

Claiming that retailers don't care about the security of their customers' data is not accurate, but one publication is making the case that retail organizations simply aren't doing enough to protect this sensitive information. They are too complacent, and therefore putting their customers at greater risk for fraud as they are more vulnerable to hacks and security breaches. 

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.

Get caught up with latest news regarding data breaches for the week of September 22nd.

On September 9, Apple announced that they will start incorporating Apple Pay into their mobile devices. Apple and members of the media claim that Apple Pay could potentially put an end to the data breaches involving point-of-sale (POS) systems. We take a deeper look into Apple’s new payment service, to see if consumer are truly as a safe as the tech company claims to be. 

Get caught up with latest news regarding data breaches for the week of the September 8.

Get caught up with latest news regarding data breaches for the week of the September 1.

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:

Update 1: In a Brian Krebs exclusive, sources informed Brian Krebs that in a conference call with several financial institutions, MasterCard shared several updates regarding the Home Depot data breach. According to Krebs' sources, MasterCard told affected banks that the card brand believes that only self-checkout terminals were affected in the breach. At the time of writing, Home Depot neither confirmed nor denied this report as the investigation is still underway.

Get caught up with latest news regarding data breaches for the week of the August 25.

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.