Do U.S. retailers get it?
Do they understand the need to move more rapidly toward chip-and-PIN technology?
If they didn’t understand before, they should now in light of the massive data breach at Home Depot.
Speeding up the transition from old magnetic strip cards is particularly urgent after millions of debit and credit card numbers were stolen by cyber thieves from the home improvement giant and offered for sale on an underground website for a combined asking price of more than $8 million.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporters were able to gain access to this black market in less than a minute — it’s the same nefarious group that sold millions of card numbers pilfered from Target last year.
Cards embedded with a data chip, already widely in use in Europe and Canada, might thwart such attacks. Many Americans already carry the new cards, but many retailers don’t yet have the technology that allows them to be used.
New credit card standards go into effect in October 2015 that should push most retailers to take the step, but in light of the recent cyber terrorism, that strikes us as far too slow. Retailers should move now to accommodate the safer cards. Target is spending $100 million on cyber security, Bloomberg reports, including loading its own credit cards with “chip-and-PIN” technology.
When a consumer swipes a traditional card, information on the magnetic strip is downloaded into a retailer’s computer system. When a chip-and-PIN card is swiped, the consumer also must enter a PIN to complete the purchase. Experts say that cards with chips are harder to copy than cards with magnetic strips.
Though chip-enabled cards are considered safer than the old magnetic strip technology, thieves, like viruses, will adapt. The BBC recently reported how a gang in the United Kingdom had enlisted the help of clerks to steal customers’ money when they used their chip-and-PIN cards.
But chip-and-PIN cards make it harder for criminals to operate; retailers should make it as hard as possible. And the massive data breaches at Target and Home Depot should prompt them to move faster to protect consumers — and themselves — from the contagion of cyber theft.
Millions of customers wish the retailers had already done so.
— Milwaukee Journal Sentinel