While U.S. retailers have been stocking shelves, they haven’t done as much preparation as other countries to keep customer data secure.
“It’s a big party for hackers; and this holiday season, the criminals are even more focused on the U.S. because they’ve had success here dating back to the Target breach last year,” said Martin Ferenczi, president of Oberthur Technologies, a transaction-security firm.
Because the United States has been slow to move to next-generation payment technology, American consumers are “an easy mark,” Ferenczi said.
In the past year, more than 600 major data breaches were reported, an increase of about 25 percent over the previous year, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center, a consumer-advocacy group. The list of corporations that suffered such breaches reads like a who’s who of American business and includes: JPMorgan Chase, Target, Kmart, Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, Walgreens and eBay.
The big data breaches were a wake-up call to most retailers, who previously had viewed online security as a one-time expense.
“You’ll see large retailers now will have a division or a project,” said Shaul Weisband, co-founder of Jifiti, a Columbus-based mobile gifting app company. “They’re doing everything they can. Security is a developing space on a daily basis.”
Even fairly simple efforts can make a big difference, said Michael Limes, co-founder of Print Syndicate, a Columbus-based e-commerce firm.
“We don’t keep personal data for longer than we have to. We know there are people out there who want to get a hold of it,” Limes said. “Even if we write something down, it’s destroyed by the end of the day. We do things like that to protect us and protect the consumer. I think most people in our positions do similar things.”
While many retailers have invested considerable time and money to shore up their security systems, some haven’t, so individual consumers still need to take actions to protect themselves, said Columbus-based online-security expert C. Matthew Curtin, founder of Interhack Corp.
“Consumers really can’t do anything about whether a company protects their information properly, so behaving as if a breach will happen is a good idea,” Curtin said.
“What I’ve been telling people is to expect that your credit card has already been breached,” said Robert Siciliano, personal and home security expert at BestIDTheftCompanies.com.
“What (online criminals) are doing right now is brokering that data in blocks of 10,000. It’s just a matter of time before your credit card is used without your permission.”
©2014 The Columbus Dispatch (Columbus, Ohio)
