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Ask the Experts: Preventing card data breaches

What actions can be taken by the industry and the card associations to prevent another major card data breach? Security expert David Shackleford weighs in.

February 15, 2009

In late October, Heartland Payment Systems, a Princeton, N.J.-based company that provides payment processing for roughly 200,000 U.S. businesses, was contacted by Visa and MasterCard about reports of fraudulent activity on cards it had processed. A forensic examination revealed vicious malware on the company's server that was recording private cardholder data, and presumably transmitting it to a third party.

It was disturbing news for a company that processes roughly 100 million transactions per month, 40 percent of which are for small-to-medium-sized restaurants.

In light of this and other cases, such as the infamous T.J. Maxx breach, what are the responsibilities of consumers and card associations when it comes to preventing major card-data breaches?

Travis Kircher, a reporter for ATM Marketplace and the editor of SelfService.org asks David Shackleford, chief security officer at Configuresoft Inc., a corporate IT systems provider that specializes in, among other things, IT security.