Protecting Customer Data at the Point of Sale

Juniper Research predicts that rapid digitisation of the enterprise space will raise the cost of data breaches to US$2.1 trillion globally by 2019, almost four times the cost of breaches in 2015. In fact, British insurance firm Lloyd’s estimated that cyber attacks already cost businesses up to US$400 billion a year, which includes direct damage plus post-attack disruption.

“The growing cost of increasingly sophisticated cybercrime has made security a top priority for retailers at the POS, whether customers are purchasing products online via their smartphone, at an interactive in-store kiosk or a traditional cash register,” says Pinar Salk, Microsoft’s industry solutions director for Retail.

Today, any organisation or merchant that captures, transmits, processes or stores any cardholder data must adhere to the global Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which aims to reduce credit and debit card fraud. In addition, financial institutions in Europe, Latin America, Asia Pacific, Canada and the US issue chip-and-pin or contactless credit and debit cards that meet Europay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV) standards, while merchants and retailers operate EMV-ready POS devices.

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