In a world that revolves around technology and the internet, with businesses moving online and accepting credit cards as payment both in store and online; it is crucial, now more than ever before that credit card information is protected.  Most people work hard to protect their personal information from falling into the wrong hands, but what happens when they input their information into a website without a second thought believing the company has the necessary precautions in place to protect and safeguard their information? We’ve all done this before, making online purchases from large, reputable websites and a few lesser known sites as well. So, how do you know your information is going to be protected?

Any business that accepts credit cards as a form of payment, whether in store or online via a shopping cart must be in compliance with PCI DSS Standards. As a result, being able to safely store and process credit card information is vital to ensuring a business remains profitable and in good standing with not only credit card companies but with their customers as well. Because credit cards have become the payment method of choice for many consumers, it has fallen on businesses to protect their customers information, which is why security standards were developed in the early 2000s.

The Birth of the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard

When the internet really started to take off, evolving into a necessary aspect of everyday life, more and more businesses started to realize the possibilities afforded them through the internet. Therefore, they began making the move to conduct their business online. As a result, it became readily apparent to credit card companies, that security breaches were increasingly common through transactions made online. The PCI DSS Security Standards came about as a result of increased theft of personal banking and credit card information obtained from unsecure payment systems.

With the freedom to conduct and grow your business online, reaching a broader customer base, means that there are additional risk that both the business and consumers are exposed to. Malicious malware and hackers are continually changing and adapting—finding new ways to get around the strictest security features in place to obtain and steal vital information. Whether you are a start up business or a large, well established corporation, protecting your customers information is imperative—especially when it comes to their method of payment.

The idea behind PCI DSS, was to protect businesses from costly consumer and bank data breaches as a result of processing credit cards online or in store. While the regulations may seem a bit daunting and overwhelming for business owners, knowing, understanding and being in compliance is the best way to protect your customers’ personal or financial information and your business from fines and penalties.

In the early 2000s, five major credit card companies—Visa, Mastercard, Discover, Japanese Credit Bureau (JCB) and American Express all came together to establish the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). These standards were created to protect merchants from costly data breaches and fines. These standards were intended to be comprehensive, to ensure the highest level of protection was in place.

Shortly after the creation of the PCI DSS, the Payment Card Industry Security Standards Council (PCI SCC) was established as an independent, additional group that would be responsible for overseeing and adapting security standards going forward. Since its creation in 2008, the PCI SCC continues to regularly update the standards outlined in the PCI DSS to reflect the current best practices to protect both merchants and consumers.  This includes the implementation of standards for wireless networks and to mandate additional security measures to reflect the latest technology trends and payment methods.

In recent years, the PCI SCC has extended the amount of time merchants have to become compliant with new regulations. Merchants have now have up to one-year to become compliant. This allows merchants time to not only learn and understand the new requirements, but to be able to implement the updates and enact policies to support the new regulations in their businesses.

What Does it Mean to Be PCI Compliant?

At this point, you are probably wondering what does it mean to be PCI compliant? PCI DSS are the security standards that have been established by the credit card industry powerhouses—Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and JBS. PCS DSS was intended to ensure all merchants safely and securely accept, store, process and transmit credit card information they gather with every credit card transaction.

As a self-mandated system, every merchant who accepts payment via credit card, either online or at a physical location is responsible for compliance to protect against data breeches. The standards, as established dictate that each business establish data security policies for their organization and implement employee training to protect credit card data.

Every credit card contains sensitive information, such as the card holders name, account number, expiration date, Chip, Magnetic Strip and CAV2/CID/CCV2/CVV2 that must be protected. Additionally, businesses should not retain any of this information, to mitigate the risk of a data breech. If it is necessary to retain any of the sensitive information from a credit card, your business may be required to produce valid reasons for keeping specific information, along with being able to demonstrate that the necessary security measures are in place to protect the stored information.

How a business stores, disposes of and protects sensitive credit card information is determined by the PCI DSS. The requirements for becoming compliant and maintaining compliance are based on a few facts about your business, including size and volume of transactions you process in a given year. As part of the requirements to become compliant, each business must complete either a yearly self-assessment questionnaire (SAQ) and/or sufficiently pass a quarterly PCI security scan.

The SAQ is a series of questions intended to determine a business’s compliance with PCI security levels. This information can also help to find and select a credit card processor that guarantees PCI compliant credit card processing solutions, providing you with peace of mind knowing all credit card transactions your business takes are going to be done in the safest manner possible.

Why You Need to Be Compliant

Aside from providing a safe and secure platform for consumers to confidently make a purchase, there are a few other reasons why it is imperative to become and maintain compliance with PCI DSS. Here are a few additional reasons that might potentially motivate you to ensure you maintain compliance:

• Provide Security to Prevent Data Breaches

One of the first, and arguably, most important rules of business is to protect not only your businesses information but that of your customers as well. In most cases, you’ll have policies in place that dictate when and how to inspect your physical security. But, what about the digital information that your business collects and retains? Malware and malicious threats are continually evolving and are one step ahead of the latest security measures which is why it is necessary that you take the required precautions to protect your computers, networks, servers and other electronic means of collecting payments.

• Increase Consumer Confidence in Your Business

Companies who have taken the necessary precautions to ensure their compliance with PCI are able to provide their customers with increased confidence knowing their information will be kept safe. If consumers lack confidence in your business they are less likely to conduct business with you. This can ultimately have an effect on your bottom line. Studies have found after a company has suffered a data breach that a vast majority of U.S. adults avoid doing business with that company. Obtaining and maintaining PCI compliance proves to consumers that you take security seriously and you are willing to take the necessary steps to protect their confidential payment information.

• Protects Business from Fines and Lawsuits

In the event that you do face the repercussions of a data breach, you could potentially also have to face fines and lawsuits from customers and other organizations. Lawsuits may be filed against your company by individuals whose information was compromised or even third-party lawsuits. Additionally, you could accrue fines from the government, credit card companies or others. If you take the necessary precautions to be compliant with the standards established as outlined by the PCI DSS, you can reduce the impact of a data breach by diminished fines, lawsuits and liability that may be imposed upon your company by your credit card processor, acquiring bank or government agencies.

When companies work to become PCI compliant, they are proving to their customers they take security very seriously. They are preemptive in taking the necessary steps to ensure all data they obtain is kept confidential. PCI compliance also provides both companies and consumers with peace of mind knowing their information is secure.

Requirements for PCI DSS Compliance

According to federal law, PCI DSS compliance is not required by the Federal Government, in the United States. While it might not be a federal requirement, some states, such as Nevada, have enacted laws specifically addressing PCI compliance, requiring businesses to be in compliance at all times.

Even though it is not necessarily a law, major credit card schemes require businesses to achieve and maintain PCI DSS compliance once they have reached a certain size and conduct a specified volume of business. The way PCI DSS compliance is set up, is on a sliding scale, as your business operations grow so do the requirements for compliance. This allows for businesses to be able to adjust and implement the necessary security measures as their business grows. To be considered PCI compliant, there are two main objectives to complete:

• A Comprehensive Compliant Scan to check for weak spots or vulnerability
• Complete a Self-Assessment Questionnaire (SAQ)

Additionally, there are four main areas that further define the requirements to become PCI compliant and to help establish policies to train employees:

1. Establish a Secure Network

Businesses that have taken advantage of the internet, or those whose systems store payment information on a computer network system are responsible for ensuring their systems are secure. This means they need to have the necessary protections in place to protect their systems from hackers and data breaches of their network. This includes having an active firewall system in place that works to protect the system from both internal and external unauthorized access to sensitive information.

2. Securing Network Against Threats

Sensitive information should be limited to only those who have a valid need for accessing the information. This means data should be protected when it is being transmitted or stored to prevent unauthorized personal from gaining access. One of the most common ways to achieve this is to encrypt data when it is being transmitted. Once there is no longer a need for sensitive information, data should be securely disposed of and rendered unreadable to prevent it from falling into the wrong hands.

3. Manage Network

One of the easiest and most important ways to ensure data is protected and to reduce the risk of exposure to a hack, is to ensure all systems and hardware are kept up to date. This is especially important when it comes to your systems anti-virus software. Establish protocols that dictate regular virus and PCI complaint scans that can detect any areas of vulnerability or infiltrations to the system early on.

4. Control Access to Sensitive Data

Limiting access to information, along with knowing who has access and when information is accessed is vital to providing a secure platform for payments. PCI compliance states sensitive information should be securely stored under lock and key as long as it is needed, as soon as information is no longer needed, it must be destroyed completely. For information that is stored on a computer, each user must have a unique access credentials that have to be entered before information can be retrieved. This is required to minimize the chances of unauthorized personal gaining access to secure information.

Additionally, businesses should continually monitor and test their systems on a regular basis to check for breaches or vulnerability. This can be done in-house, or out sourced to a third-party auditor.

Aside from protecting the sensitive information contained within a credit card, companies must also keep all personal information about the card holder private. This includes their name, birth date, Social Security number, phone number and address.

Who is Responsible for PCI Compliance?

Are you solely responsible for protecting your customers sensitive information, or is your processors partly responsible too? This is a complex question that doesn’t have a cut and dry answer. As has been previously established, there are different aspects that go into PCI compliance, all working together to protect sensitive information. Because there are so many parts, it is important to know who is responsible for what to ensure compliance is being met.

A common misconception many businesses have, is that the responsibility falls on the shoulders of the IT person. When in reality, every employee within an organization has a responsibility to protect sensitive payment information of their customers. In most companies there is an individual who is tasked with ensuring that compliance is met. Although, it is important to note that every employee can compromise the organizations compliance if they are not careful and conscious of everything they are doing. Policies and procedures are established and put in place to protect information, when employees fail to follow the procedure is when information and compliance is usually lost.

The fact is, that just because a business is PCI compliant does not mean they are protected from data breaches. In fact, breaches do happen to companies of all sizes, compliant and non-compliant. The advantage of being compliant is that businesses will have response plans in place and are prepared to act when the unfortunate does happen. Additionally, because they are PCI compliant they are protected against fines and lawsuits.

Consequences of Non-Compliance

When an organization is not compliant with the PCI DSS standards and a security breach occurs, the merchant may be subject to substantial fines which are the most common repercussion. Depending on the severity of the breach, some fines imposed on merchants can be anywhere from $5,000 to $10,000 every month until all compliance issues are resolved and the breach has been adequately handled. Businesses who neglect to resolve their security issues, may have their privilege of accepting credit cards as payment revoked by the credit card companies and your credit card processor.

It is important to remember when a business credit card system is hacked, the hacker now has access to innumerable credit cards. As a result, they can steal millions or billions of dollars from a culmination of various individuals! So, aside from fines and penalties what other consequences can businesses face when sensitive information is hacked? Here are seven consequences businesses may face as a result of either non-compliance with PCI DSS or an unknowing error on the part of the business.

1. Compensation

After a security breach, customers are going to be leery about doing business with you in the future. Additionally, bad news is going to spread far and wide which means you are going to need to offer some sort of compensation to earn back their trust. Generally, this comes in the form of offering free credit monitoring for those who are affected. While it will be free for your customers to take advantage of, it is going to cost you substantially.

2. Lawsuits

It is not all that uncommon for individuals who have their private credit card information stolen to file a lawsuit against the company. Nowadays, lawsuits are more and more common, more complicated and ultimately costlier. Be prepared if your system gets hacked to fork out vast amounts of money in legal fees.

3. Bank Fines

When a credit card is used fraudulently to make unauthorized purchases, the issuing bank will reimburse the individuals money, meaning you are not responsible for the reimbursement. Unfortunately, as a result, banks will then pass on the cost of reimbursement to you in the form of steep fines which you will be required to pay back. Depending on the severity of the breach and the amount of information lost, fines can easily exceed thousands of dollars.

4. Federal Audits

Large corporations who experience a data breach, can attract the attention of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The FTC is tasked with monitoring organizations who are found to be non-compliant with the standards established by the PCI DSS and can have a major impact on a vast number of people. As a result, the FTC may elect to conduct regular audits for the foreseeable future. Additionally, they may elect to fine corporations themselves. Along with federal audits come extremely strict requirements for compliance to security standards.

5. Internal Security Costs

Following a security breach, there are going to be substantial internal cost to investigate the cause of the breach, ways to improve your security to prevent future breaches along with reviewing personal and making necessary employment decisions regarding hiring or firing of responsible employees. You’ll be required to take the necessary steps to ensure your internal information security is top-notch and a breach won’t happen again.

6. Lost Revenue

Anytime there is a security breach, news will spread fast! As a result of the negative publicity, consumers will be leery about conducting business with you in the future. This can have severe negative impacts on your bottom line and business revenue as most consumers will take their business elsewhere. The impact of lost revenue from a data breach can be quite costly.

7. Damaged Reputation

Another major consequence that comes from a security hack is the fact that your reputation is now tainted. Any time consumers hear your company name, chances are they will experience negative thoughts and question their decision to conduct business with your or not. While it is nearly impossible to completely reverse the effects of a tainted reputation, countless hours of Public Relations and reputation management can work to mitigate the consequences.

Trust Guard’s Compliant Scanning

There are so many benefits that come from being PCI DSS compliant—providing a safe and secure way for customers to make purchases all while protecting your businesses from substantial fines and minimizing the risk of losing revenue. Along with protecting your business from fines and legal fees, being known as a company that is honest and secure can go a long way in building trust with consumers.

As more and more consumers elect to make purchases online via credit cards, it is imperative that merchants know and understand the importance of PCI DSS compliance and strive to ensure their compliance. This can be achieved through regular compliance scanning, which is performed by a reliable source, such as Trust Guard.

Trust Guard provides PCI compliant scans to help merchants find weakness and breaches with their website security. Upon successfully passing a scan and obtaining PCI Compliance, websites are then granted a trust seal. These seals are displayed on a secure website, serving as a visual indication to consumers that the website is safe and can be trusted to guard and protect sensitive credit card information.

Having a regular and thorough complaint scan will be able to detect any security risk, data breaches and areas where you can improve your security. This provides valuable information as companies’ websites are marked with the Trust Guard security seal, tend to attract more customers than those without.

A shocking 80% of all websites are susceptible to some sort of attack or hack due to weak or missing security measures. Because this number is so high, Trust Guard provides a regular compliant scan to those who elect to trust their website security to Trust Guard. With comprehensive compliance scanning, you will be able to detect any security threats before they become big problems. Prove to your customers you deserve their business by earning a Trust Guard seal of security!

Sources

Trust-guard.com. (2018). Trust Seals from Trust Guard – Our Trust Seal and scanning will Increase Your Sales!. [online] Available at: https://www.trust-guard.com/ [Accessed 9 May 2018].

Square. (2018). PCI Compliance: What You Need to Know. [online] Available at: https://squareup.com/guides/pci-compliance [Accessed 9 May 2018].

Hospitality Technology. (2018). PCI DSS Compliance: Just Whose Responsibility is It?. [online] Available at: https://hospitalitytech.com/pci-dss-compliance-just-whose-responsibility-it [Accessed 10 May 2018].

Infosecurity Magazine. (2018). Consumers Take Their Business Elsewhere After a Data Breach. [online] Available at: https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/news/consumers-take-their-business-elsewhere-after-a/ [Accessed 10 May 2018].

Blog.securitymetrics.com. (2018). The Importance of the PCI DSS: Why You Should Get Compliant. [online] Available at: http://blog.securitymetrics.com/2016/07/importance-of-pcidss-get-compliant.html [Accessed 13 May 2018].

Everything You Need to Become PCI Compliant. [online] Enterprise Ecommerce Blog – Enterprise Business Marketing, News, Tips & More. Available at: https://www.shopify.com/enterprise/86366534-everything-you-need-to-become-pci-compliant [Accessed 13 May 2018].

SecurionPay – Payment Gateway. (2018). Do I need to be PCI compliant?. [online] Available at: https://securionpay.com/blog/do-i-need-to-be-pci-compliant/ [Accessed 15 May 2018].

Merchant Link. (2018). How to Explain PCI Compliance Penalties to Beginners | Merchant Link. [online] Available at: http://www.merchantlink.com/how-explain-pci-compliance-penalties-beginners/ [Accessed 15 May 2018].

DeRose, J. and I.S. Partners, L. (2018). PCI Non Compliance Fines & Consequences | I.S. Partners LLC. [online] I.S. Partners. Available at: https://www.ispartnersllc.com/blog/pci-non-compliance-fines-consequences/ [Accessed 16 May 2018].

Point, V., Payments, S. and History, P. (2018). PCI DSS History – Compliance and Requirements – Vantiv. [online] Vantiv. Available at: https://www.vantiv.com/vantage-point/safer-payments

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The program she oversees is the Internet Measurement and Attack Modeling. According to the Division’s web page, the program addresses the need to improve cohesion among Internet Service Providers.

“Associated data analysis, such as geographic mapping, will improve the understanding of peering relationships and thus provide a more complete view of network topology, which will help to identify the infrastructure components in greatest need of protection. In conjunction with this work, research in attack modeling will allow critical infrastructure owners/operators to predict the effects of cyber attacks on their systems, particularly in the areas of malware and botnet attacks, …and situational understanding and attack attribution,” the web page reads.

Interestingly, one of the partners in the program, is Cox’s alma mater, BYU. Located in Utah, about an hour’s drive from Salt Lake City, BYU is a private institution run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. 

But Cox is just one of thirteen program managers for the Division, many of whom have also received their PhDs.

So what are these academicians-turned-government employees up to? How are they helping to improve the security of the internet?

What is the purpose of the Division?

We know that threats to cyber security is a very real and common. In fact, 86% of the companies that come to Trust Guard for cyber security protection fail their first vulnerability scan. Every day, Trust Guard deals with companies that come to them after their websites have been hacked or compromised.

In a nutshell, the division is tasked with preventing and investigating such attacks. Much of prevention comes from research and here is where the former researcher-professors feel at home.

According to the web page, the Division’s “mission is to contribute to enhancing the security and resilience of the nation’s critical information infrastructure and the Internet. This is done by (1) developing and delivering new technologies, tools and techniques to enable DHS and the U.S. to defend, mitigate and secure current and future systems, networks and infrastructure against cyber attacks, (2) conducting and supporting technology transition, and  (3) leading and coordinating research and development (R&D) among the R&D community which includes department customers, government agencies, the private sector and international partners.”

Essentially, this Division combines research from the private and public sector in order to provide the American people with a safer cyberspace. That includes using the internet from our smartphones.

According to a recent news release, the Division recently awarded five app companies $8.6 million to aid in security efforts.

“Each group has proposed and will develop innovative secure solutions that will greatly improve the enterprise security of mobile devices and apps connected to back end systems,” said Vincent Sritapan, one of the thirteen program managers. “Through these and future projects, the Mobile Application Security R&D project will ensure mobile apps are secure no matter whether they are developed by the enterprise or acquired from third-party app markets.”

To learn more about the Cyber Security Division, visit: https://www.dhs.gov/science-and-technology/cyber-security-division.

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It seems like every day more and more companies and business owners like Deal Crunch freely discuss the benefits of Trust Guard’s security scanning and trust seals.

They wrote a full, 1000 + word article about Trust Guard that you can read here: http://www.dealcrunch.com/blog/trust-guard-helps-brands-inspire-consumer-confidence/

Here’s the testimonial we received from Deal Crunch:

“We were impressed with the level of security Trust Guard provides and the integrity of the company overall. We consider Trust Guard to be a leader among competing brands because of its commitment to deliver increased conversions while not locking users into a long term contract. Keep up the good work!” 

If you have been just as grateful for what Trust Guard has done to either secure or grow your site (or both), please let us know. Need to protect your website from hackers? We can help with our proven security scans. Want to increase your conversion rate? Just display our trust seals for a guaranteed increase in sales.

We love our customers and promise to continue to do our best to provide quality products at fair prices.

Review the full article from Deal Crunch here: http://www.dealcrunch.com/?p=32922&preview=1&_ppp=d62b796d59

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Inc. 500

For the second time in as many years, Shopper Approved, our rating and review software, was named by Inc. 500 as one of the fastest growing American-based companies. That is quite an honor for just one year. But to do it in two consecutive years shows how many business owners around the world have benefited from more positive ratings and reviews than any other brand.

Free from Record-Breaking Hacks

While 2017 experienced the worst and most data breaches so far according to identityforce.com, Trust Guard’s daily security scanned customers, however, have remained free from such breaches. According to the article, here are just a few of the popular companies that have been hacked: ESEA, XBox, PSP, IHG, Arby’s, River City Media, Verifone, Dun & Bradstreet, Sax Fifth Avenue, FAFSA, and Chipotle. The total number of hacked sites surpassed 10 million. If you want to do everything possible to protect yourself from hackers, upgrade to daily PCI compliant scanning. If you haven’t already, you can do so through your Trust Guard member control panel.

100,000 New Clients in 2017

We have helped over 100,000 entrepreneurs start their online businesses. Besides other strategies and tools, we have provided them with privacy policies. We’ve now reached more than 700,000 total happy customers who have used our wizard to create their privacy policies. On average, this process takes less than 15 minutes. If your website doesn’t have a privacy policy, get one for free at freeeprivacypolicy.com.

New Live Chat Mobile App

We’ve also created a new Android app to accompany our live chat and help desk software called Rhino Support. Now, business owners can answer live chats at home, the beach, the store or anywhere else they happen to be. We’ve got the best customer service platform at the best price – starting at only $15 a month! Look for our iOS app in spring of 2018.

There are a lot of other things we’ve achieved, like helping an orphanage in Guatemala build a housing unit. This allowed siblings to live closer together. It’s been a good year for us and we want to sincerely thank our employees, partners and customers who have made it all possible. We appreciate your loyalty and look forward to an even better year next year!

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Last week I came home from a really long shopping trip. I opened the freezer and reached for a pizza to throw into the oven. I was starving and couldn’t wait to sink my teeth into it. Then I realized that something had gone horribly wrong. I held up the pizza and read the label. It didn’t say Pepperoni. I read something very, very different.

It said “Anchovies.”

I didn’t want to go back to the store, but I really, really hate anchovies and I was starving! I ended up making a peanut butter and jam sandwich all because I didn’t check the label closely.

Labels can fool us. When we’re shopping, we have to look at the ingredients or at other details to make sure we get what we want. And it’s no different with internet security. Just because a name sounds good, it doesn’t mean that it’s the best product available.

People sometimes confuse the #1 rated, 11-year veteran, internet security company Trust Guard with a similar company, Trustwave. Their names are similar and they perform similar functions—but that does not mean they’re the same. Trust Guard is the best choice for protecting your online business, your customers, and for promoting your online sales.

Trustwave does do PCI compliant scanning for your business, but Trust Guard also includes industry-leading, third-party website verification with its trust seals – proven to make you more money. Shoppers know that your site is what it says it is and does what it says it does. Trust Guard’s seals communicate the trustworthiness of your business to online shoppers through certificates. You’ll make more money in 60 days or they’ll double your money back!

In other words, Trust Guard helps make your business more trustworthy so that potential customers are more likely to make a purchase on your site.

We’re not saying that Trustwave is as bad as an anchovy pizza. We’re just saying that Trust Guard is the best choice with better options to help your online business move to the next level. The sooner you check it out, the better off you’ll be.

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As a business owner, you might wonder how a television series is supposed to teach you how to make more money. However, the lives that the characters in the show live, the decisions they make, and the people that eventually end up dead because of this may be far more relatable than you’d think for a fantasy series. The show illustrates some pretty interesting life-lessons from which every business owner can learn a thing or two. Below are four business lessons every entrepreneur can learn from the Game of Thrones.

Winter Is Coming:

This is one phrase that was mentioned a lot in the series. Used by the Lords of the North, these words serve a kind of warning and call for vigilance. They must prepare for the coming harsh winter and possibly the coming of the White Walkers. While there may not be any White Walkers coming for your business, every business goes through struggles. Preparing for this is important for the business’s survival. Most startups might take months before they can sustain themselves, break even and then generate a profit.

Difficult situations will undoubtedly shake your confidence as an entrepreneur. Build up your confidence and then create a strong support network. Create an emergency savings account for your business and then scan your site for vulnerabilities that may be accessible to hackers. Planning ahead is a necessity for the survival of every business.

You Can’t Do It All Alone:

There is a famous quote from the book. It says “When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives.” Every business owner wants to feel in control the affairs of their businesses. You need help in making decisions. You also need to trust in the people you hire to delegate and run your business. This is very important for every business’ survival.

Your Family Name/Brand Name Matters A Lot:

Ned Stark is known as a man of honor. The Lannisters are one of the proudest families in the series. Tywin Lannister (the head of their family) had made rash decisions, fought and killed many just to uphold their family name. They say “The Lannisters always pay their debts.” Creating a brand for your business, having and standing by a motto is also very important. Japanese automobile manufacturer Toyota, has a distinct logo recognizable anywhere in the world with their cars having durable engines. Mobile phone manufacturer Nokia, is renowned for making highly durable mobile phones with long lasting batteries. Let your business be known for something great, something your customers can talk about, a legacy, that people will remember for years to come.

Things Don’t Always Go As Planned:

Surely, you’ll want to have a great business idea, save up some money to bring it to reality and expect a lot of money to fill up your entire living room afterwards. Well, that’s not going to happen right away. Sometimes in Games of Thrones it’d look like all is going well, but then everything would fall apart. The world is a cruel place they say, so prepare your business for unexpected things. If you haven’t seen an episode of the TV series, it’s never too late. If you have, I’ll leave you with a quote from Cersi Lannister: “When you play the game of thrones you win or you die. There is no middle ground.”

This article was written by Emmanuel Ozigi, a biochemist in the making from Nigeria. In his spare time, he’s a science, health, and fitness blogger. He also specializes in graphic design and photo editing. He has an insatiable hunger for information and the desire to learn new things. Visit his blog at http://sciencehealth24.com.

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The online magazine informed us that “a series of recent hacker attacks…resulted in the intruders gaining hands-on access to power grid operations—enough control that they could have induced blackouts on American soil at will.” Symantec security analyst Eric Chien is concerned, He says that this is the highest level of access hackers have ever been known to gain among American power companies.

If large enough power grids were knocked out in the United States, it wouldn’t merely cause major inconveniences and hardships. It could lead to the deaths of millions of people.

Could this type of hack affect you personally?

This should be a wake-up call to everyone about the dangerous capabilities of hackers. This could affect our own personal lives and in our businesses. Hackers might not be causing massive blackouts right now. But they can cause major personal problems. Such was the case of the Strater family of Oswego, Illinois.

Due to the hacking activity of a Finnish teenager, they’ve received threatening phone calls at all hours of the day. They’ve received phone calls and visits from worldwide strangers because the visitors had been told they’d get a free Tesla car. The Straters have even been visited by police late at night because of a phony 911 call alleging an attempted murder.

It’s true that this harassment was provoked by the Straters’ son Blair, a hacker himself. But it nonetheless gives us an idea of just how vulnerable we all are to cyber criminals if they decide to put us in their cross hairs. It also shows the wide range of damage that they can do via the Internet. And, of course, we know all about the damage that can be done by identity theft. Just imagine what chaos would happen if your business wasn’t protected by a solid security system, such as Trust Guard.

Trust Guard is dedicated to protecting your business thoroughly against the vast number of threats that are just waiting to take advantage if you’re unprepared. Trust Guard will scan your business site for the more than 75,000 known vulnerabilities so your site can be secured, and so you can avoid the major chaos and damage from hackers. Don’t take any chances; get started with Trust Guard today. They will take your business out of the cross hairs.

Special thanks to Wired for their article: https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-gain-switch-flipping-access-to-us-power-systems/

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Sonic responded,“We are working to understand the nature and scope of this issue, as we know how important this is to our guests.  We immediately engaged third-party forensic experts and law enforcement when we heard from our processor. While law enforcement limits the information we can share, we will communicate additional information as we are able.”

An article from Krebs On Security shares the following:

From my perspective, organized crime gangs have so completely overrun the hospitality and restaurant point-of-sale systems here in the United States. I just assume my card may very well be compromised whenever I use it at a restaurant or hotel bar/eatery. I’ve received no fewer than three new credit cards over the past year. I’d wager that in at least one of those cases I happened to have used the card at multiple merchants whose POS systems were hacked at the same time.

But no matter how many times I see it, it’s fascinating to watch this slow motion train wreck play out. Given how much risk and responsibility for protecting against these types of hacking incidents is spread so thinly across the entire industry, it’s little wonder that organized crime gangs have been picking off POS providers en masse in recent years.

I believe one big reason we keep seeing the restaurant and hospitality industry being taken to the cleaners by credit card thieves is that in virtually all of these incidents, the retailer or restaurant has no direct relationships to the banks which have issued the cards that will be run through their hacked POS systems. Rather, these small Tier 3 and Tier 4 merchants are usually buying merchant services off of a local systems integrator who often is in turn reselling access to a third-party payment processing company.

The Sonic attack is similar to what hit Wendy’s earlier this year. More than 1,000 of its locations were involved in a POS hack. Hackers stole specific payment card information including cardholder names, credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates, cardholder verification values, and service codes. With Wendy’s, the malicious actor accessed the POS terminals by compromising a third-party vendor’s credentials.

Other examples of POS terminal data breaches include Home Depot and Hilton Hotels.

Your website is safe if you and your third-party vendors are using Trust Guard’s Security Scanned services. But are your POS terminals safe? Contact us today to make sure your clients’ personal and credit card information is protected from hackers.

Tips for protecting POS systems

~ Perform consistent security scans within your website and server.
~ Ensure that your third-party vendors are also performing proper risk assessments within their digital ecosystem. Trust Guard can uncover weak security controls and work with the vendor to repair such issues before they are exploited.

Remember that your attack surfaces extend to third parties. If a breach occurs, you will bear the financial and reputational consequences. If a POS data breach it can happen to Sonic Drive In and countless others, it can happen to you.

Special thanks to SC Magazine and their article on the Sonic Drive In Data Breach.

The post Sonic Drive In Suffered Point of Sale Data Breach appeared first on Trust Guard Blog.

Hackers disrupt someone’s life every minute of every day. In fact, more than 140 million people associated with the Equifax breach were hacked this summer. There are several basic things you can do to stay ahead of the bad guys and know what to look out for if your personally identifiable information has been compromised.

Online Security Tips for Consumers:

• Routinely monitor all of your financial accounts for suspicious activities, such as transactions you did not make. If your institution offers account activity alerts via text or email, sign up for them.
• Cyber criminals can now use data from a breach to access your other online accounts via password reset questions. These questions usually ask you personal information such as your mother’s maiden name and previous addresses. If you have ever used any of this information in those types of security questions, you should change the questions immediately.
• If the information that was leaked in the breach was as a Social Security number or other personally identifiable information, you may want to consider putting a security freeze on your credit report. This will prevent other institutions from accessing your report entirely. It will also stop hackers from opening any new credit lines or credit extensions under your name. Also be sure to contact the Social Security Administration if dealing with a data breach that involves your SSN about next steps.
• If you do encounter suspicious activity on your account, contact your bank immediately. Inform them of the activity as well as the fact that your information was exposed in a breach. Secondly, contact the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) and file a report.
• If a password was involved in the breach – change it. These passwords should be difficult to hack and should be different for every account and changed at least every six months.

Check Websites for PCI Compliance

When shopping online, look for sites that are PCI compliant. These websites are meeting the standards set by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) and are scanned for vulnerabilities accessible to hackers. Trust Guard scans for more than 75,575 vulnerabilities for thousands of websites all over the world. Look for the Trust Guard trust seal on websites. If you see one, you’ll know that it is safe from hackers.

Breaches are common these days because the payoff for cyber criminals may be lucrative. For this reason, it’s important that you stay as proactive as possible.

Special thanks to Symantec for much of the information found in this article.

The post Equifax Breach ~ How to Protect Yourself appeared first on Trust Guard Blog.

Since business owners have worked hard to get their businesses online, why not take the extra step of protecting it? Here are some of the ways you can protect your website from hackers:

Make Regular Data Backups:

No matter how secure you think your business website is, it is compulsory to have all your files backed up to a local disk in case your website gets deleted by hackers. You can simply just restore your site and pick up from where you left off. This is inexpensive and definitely worth the time and effort.

Keep Everything Up-to-date:

Updates are released for a reason. Ensuring that platforms or scripts you’ve installed on your website are up-to-date is probably the best thing you can do to protect your website. If you’re using an open-source software for your website, then your code is easily available to hackers and they can study this code and search for vulnerabilities. That allows them to take control of your website by exploiting any platform or script weaknesses.

Install Plugins that Increase Security:

Installing security plugins is very important to provide website security. These plugins and some other web security services simply close site security loopholes and provide daily monitoring for everything from malware detection to vulnerability identification to active virus scanning and more. Trust Guard provides vulnerability scanning of more than 75,500 known security issues.

Use SSL Certificates:

I’m sure by now you know that you’re submitting information to a secure website when you look in the address bar and see “https://” and not “http://”. What this does is that it provides an extra level of encryption making your website transactions more secure and your site more trustworthy.

Use of Parameterized Queries:

There are a lot of things you can do to protect your website from Hackers who use SQL injection. Using parameterized queries is one of the easiest ways to do this. It ensures your code has enough specific parameters so that there’s no room for a hacker to mess with them.

Use More Secure Passwords:

There’s no better way to secure your website from hackers than by using more secure passwords. Avoid using personal information such as date of birth, pet name, your name, phone number or email address as passwords. These information can be easily guessed by hackers.

Set Permissions to Website File Directories:

Lock down your directory and file permissions to prevent hackers and intruders from accessing important files in your web directory. Websites are made up of series of files and folders that are stored on your web hosting account. Setting permissions to use these folders is very important.

Hide Admin Pages:

Prevent your admin login page from being indexed by search engines. Use the robots.txt file to stop search bots from listing them. If they are not indexed then they are harder for hackers to find.

Install A Web Application Firewall:

This sets between your website server and the data connection and reads every bit of data passing through it.

Website security is an important part of any online business owners’ website. Ensuring that your website is safe will make your customers feel more comfortable using your website and submitting their personal information.

The post Business Owners: Protect Your Site from Hackers appeared first on Trust Guard Blog.

Equifax Inc. is a consumer credit reporting agency headquartered in the United States. It is considered one of the three largest American credit agencies along with Experian and TransUnion. The online security breach damages the reputation of Equifax. There will be lawsuits to deal with as well.

Legal Claims Against Equifax

According to an article in the NY Daily News, two New York women, who claim to be Equifax customers, have already started the legal process to receive compensation. Their lawyers say the women “live in constant fear,” worried that they might be victims of identity theft because of Equifax’s data breach. Linda Tirelli and Brooke Merino filed a claim against Equifax on Monday. They allege that the credit reporting agency “failed to properly safeguard the information.”

Tirelli and Merino’s lawyers claim their client’s information was compromised during the hacker’s data attack.  Reportedly, eight million New York residents were impacted. The Manhattan Federal Court suit, which seeks class action status, maintains Equifax dropped the ball. It states that they didn’t protect consumers. It also alleges that they failed to give clients enough notice about the breach — violating state and federal law. Usually, data breaches are disclosed via a company’s press release, which quickly reaches offline, radio, TV, and online news outlets.

More than 30,000 websites are broken into every day because companies fail to check for security vulnerabilities on their own websites. It’s shocking to see that when sites are initially monitored for security risks from Trust Guard, more than 85% of them fail their first scan. Trust Guard, the leader in website security, scans websites and servers for more than 75,500 vulnerabilities. It contacts business owners when there are security issues so that the holes can be repaired quickly. Once the repairs are made, the website is re-scanned to ensure its safety.

With successful hacks like this one with Equifax, and previous hacks into LinkedIn, Yahoo, and Target, cyber criminals are gaining momentum. Monitor the security of your online business with PCI compliant security scanning. Visit Trust Guard’s website today to start protecting your business and your customers from hackers.

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