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Health & Fitness

Security breaches at Michaels, Target, and Neiman Marcus - Maybe it's time to change the technology...

Today's posting regarding the compromise of Personally Identifiable Information (PII) of Michaels' customers continues to underscore the need for the the financial industry to move forward with smart card technology for point of sale (POS) payments.  Although it is not clear that the Michaels' breach was caused by the same exploit that affected Target and Neiman Marcus over Christmas, the fact remains that as long as we carry credit cards that contain PII, our identify information is at risk.  Smart cards are different in that the card reader at the point of sale doesn't pass the user's PII to the network for authoriation - the authorization takes place locally at the point of sale.  It is curious to know that North America has been the last to embrace Smartcard technology.  It has been used for decades in Europe, initially for reducing theft in public telephones and expanded to now include bank cards such as Europay, MasterCard, VISA. Maybe it's time for us to catch up. 
 

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