Top five causes of data compromises

To help businesses better understand and protect themselves against the risks of fraud, Visa USA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce recently announced the five leading causes of data breaches and are providing information on how to avoid them. Their findings came from a detailed review of the card security environment, including common fraud techniques, potential areas of weakness by card-accepting merchants, and emerging threats.

The five leading causes of card-related data breaches are:

Storage of magnetic stripe data. The most common cause of data breaches occurs when a merchant or service provider stores sensitive information encoded on the card’s magnetic stripe in violation of the PCI Data Security Standard. This can occur because a number of point-of-sale (POS) systems improperly store this data, and the merchant may not be aware of it.

Missing or outdated security patches. Hackers are able to penetrate a merchant’s or service provider’s systems because they have not installed up-to-date security patches, leaving their systems vulnerable to intrusion.

Use of vendor-supplied default settings and passwords. In many cases, merchants receive POS hardware or software from outside vendors who install them using default settings and passwords that are often widely known to hackers and easy to guess.

SQL injection. This is a technique criminals use to exploit Web-based applications for coding vulnerabilities and to attack a merchant’s Internet applications (for example, shopping carts).

Unnecessary and vulnerable services on servers. Servers are often shipped by vendors with unnecessary services and applications that are enabled, although the user may not be aware of it. Because the services may not be required, security patches and upgrades may be ignored and the merchant system exposed to attack.

Find helpful answers to data security questions, including ways to avoid the five leading problems, at www.uschamber.com/sb/security.