By Kenneth van Wyk
Computerworld | Sep 23, 2014 2:00 AM PT
s the dawn of the age of ubiquitous e-payments finally here? Can we throw away our credit cards yet?
I wish! If you read my column regularly, you know that payment systems are a particular interest of mine. I’ve been holding out hope for a few years now that big improvements were just around the corner.
I’m a security-conscious guy, but my credit card accounts have been compromised three times in just the past couple of years. I try to be careful in how I use my cards, but the fact is that I have to use them a lot, all over the world. Given those circumstances, there doesn’t seem to be any way currently to ensure safety. Heck, the most recent compromise was of my fancy-pants EMV (Europay MasterCard Visa) card —the kind with a smart chip on it that is supposed to make it much more difficult for attackers to steal data. EMV is certainly not perfect, especially when the merchant processes it like any other credit card. That’s just what happened on a recent trip to Asia, where two merchants ran my EMV card’s magstripe through their payment terminals. Sure enough, bad things happened.
ComputerWorld/ full article here/http://www.computerworld.com/article/2687075/we-just-might-put-a-dent-in-data-breaches.html