Point of Sale

Chances are, you've already heard about the cyber attack this past holiday season that resulted in hackers aquiring the credit and debit card data of 40 million Target customers, as well as the personal information of about 70 million of the companies customers. Well now the FBI and Secret Service are stepping up to warn retailers of the impending cyber security threats in 2014. The Chicago Tribune has reported that the FBI released a confidential report to retailers in the United States regarding Point of Sale security breaches. Target, the 3rd largest retailer in the United States, suffered a security breach lasted about 19 days, and was one of the largest in history. Other retailers also experienced large data breaches in 2013, such as Nieman Markus, whose POS systems were infected over the summer, resulting in approximately 1.1 million customer's credit card data being compromised. The FBI's report mentions that about 20 recent POS attacks have been uncovered, all using malicious software similar to that which was used against Target. Unfortunately, the report warns retailers that these breaches are likely to become increasingly frequent, as cyber criminals can make big gains with cheap and readily available software. The malware in question, as the Chicago Tribune details, is known as a "memory parsing" application. This type of software exploits a small security hole in existing POS software, where by the customer's personal and credit card information are intercepted in the point of sale system's RAM before the data is encrypted. This software has been around for quite awhile, but recently, hackers have begun improving the applications to make them easier to control remotely and more difficult for anti-malware software to detect and remove. The FBI report notes that in the future, retailers will need to beef up their electronic security, and start monitoring their systems more closely to detect unusual activity. Unfortunately, while large retailers such as Target have the resources necessary to deal with these types of attacks, the government report confirms that the majority of these security breaches target small to medium sized businesses, that may not have the money or know how to prevent cyber attacks, nor to deal with them after the fact. Has your restaurant or business ever been the victim of a cyber security breach? Do you have any safeguards in place to prevent such an occurrence? Let us know via Facebook, Google+, Twitter or LinkedIn. Source: Chicago Tribune, Image Credit (Flickr)