August 28th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Merchants are still using pedestrian passwords that crooks can easily break, security company Trustwave has found. Of the nearly 630,000 stored passwords that Trustwave obtained during penetration tests in the past two years, its technicians were able to crack more than half in just a few minutes and 92% within 31 days. Even though adding new information about weak passwords or ongoing malware investigations gets frustrating because the same problems facing the financial and payments industries persist, it does not surprise Trustwave researchers. For a lot of software or hardware developers, their main concern is availability of the service. They want to make sure their POS is available and running to accept credit cards, often at the cost of a lot of security controls. It is difficult to implement security and to do it correctly.
Trustwave recommends longer passwords with more characters, rather than shorter ones with letters and numbers. A longer password that is a phrase not easily figured out is better than a shorter, complex password. These findings have been added to an online version of the 2014 Trustwave Global Security Report. To accommodate the fast changing nature of security threats, Trustwave is regularly updating its research and making the information available to consumers and payments industry stakeholders on the company’s site. The criminals stealing data are a constantly moving target. It no longer made sense for those interested in our research to have to wait a year to see new statistics. Having access to updated security reporting should be helpful to merchants. They can see how trends are tracking over time, instead of constantly having to go online to see what is relevant to them or rely on the trade groups to keep them informed. This provides one switch to keep them in the know, so there is some value there and it’s a smart move on Trustwave’s part. Since the new Payment Card Industry security requirements call for security measures to be embedded in software development lifecycles, there is some utility in Trustwave’s new approach to sharing research information.
Trustwave said the trend of businesses detecting breaches continues to rise, with 29% of businesses doing so in 2013 compared to only 9% in 2009. Trustwave compiled that data from 691 post-breach forensics investigations conducted in 2013. The report also indicated e-commerce breaches are increasing, with 54% of all breaches targeting e-commerce sites in 2013, compared to only 9% in 2010. More regions, including the U.S., being in various stages of converting to EMV chip-based cards for card-present transactions fuels the criminals’ shift to e-commerce fraud. Additionally, the company is working with law enforcement officials after discovering a control center of eight servers behind what is being called Magnitude, an exploit kit of Russian origin that has led to thousands of attacks and millions of attempted malware attacks globally.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Payment Card Industry PCI Security, Point of Sale Tagged with: breaches, card, card-present transactions, company, credit cards, data, e-commerce, EMV chip-based cards, financial, fraud, Global Security, hardware, industry, Malware, Merchant's, online, passwords, payment, Payment Card Industry security, payments, payments industries, POS, Security, servers, software
August 27th, 2014 by Elma Jane
An IT services firm, announced earlier this week that it purchased a majority stake in cloud-based travel management company. With the move,hopes to strengthen its travel vertical by using software-as-a service travel IT platform. The future of software services lies in blending models with customized solutions and services over different stages of an enterprise lifecycle and across different business segments within the enterprise. The platform combined with the strong management team and travel domain specialist will further strengthen competitive position in the travel vertical.
Posted in Best Practices for Merchants, Travel Agency Agents Tagged with: business, cloud-based, company, domain, IT, management, platform, service, software, solutions, specialist, team, travel, travel domain, travel management, travel vertical
August 26th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Being a good leader in the workplace is no easy feat. Every day is busy and full of challenges. It’s easy to get caught up in the hustle and bustle of everyday management tasks and let leadership style fall by the wayside sometimes. However, as a boss, it’s important that you don’t let this happen, as your employees are counting on you. LEADERS set the standards required of a culture. Your leadership style indicates what’s considered appropriate behavior in your organization, and that your company’s culture will moderate itself based on what you endorse both formally and informally.
So how do you know a good or if you are a good boss? This quiz will help you evaluate your leadership skills. Answer true or false to the following 20 questions, and see how your management skills add up.
1. I am approachable. Employees can ask me anything without fear of rebuke or belittlement, and I listen to them with full attention.
2. I am credible as a leader. I know my stuff.
3. I am able to explain the need for change in our business in a way that interests or encourages my employees and doesn’t dishearten them.
4. I am able to explain the wider context of situations and circumstances that affect or challenge our company in a way that my team can understand.
5. I am able to identify where my team needs to grow and/or develop skill sets and capabilities, and can find the necessary resources to facilitate this growth.
6. I am inspired by my work and the work of my team.
7. I believe in my employees.
8. I can explain to my team our key value proposition for customers in one short sentence.
9. I constantly remind myself and my team of the purpose of our work and why we are doing what we do (e.g., for customer results, customer service or to hit sales targets.)
10. I do not judge my staff based on who I am, but rather on who they could be and should be.
11. I have an up-to-date understanding of our customers’ needs and expectations of us, and their perception of us as an organization.
12. I have communicated clearly and repeatedly to people on my team or department what our core business is.
13. I have communicated clearly and repeatedly to people in my team or department what my expectations of them are.
14. I know and live by my own set of personal values that make me reliable and consistent around my team.
15. I never lose my temper with staff.
16. I personally embody the company values in everything I think, say and do in the workplace.
17. I provide an organized formal performance review process at least twice a year with my people.
18. I provide regular informal feedback on people’s efforts and performance.
19. I regularly praise employees’ efforts and behaviors by describing how they reflect our company or team values.
20. I understand and know our company values, and how our collective behavior reflects or violates these values.
The more you answered true, the closer you are to being a good boss. If you have scored 15 or more statements as true for you, you are well positioned as an effective and inspiring leader. If you have scored 10 to 15 statements as true for you, you must begin work on the oversights immediately in order to become an effective leader. If you have scored less than 10 statements as true for you, seek support or training and development, as you are currently missing many of the vital components required to be an effective leader.
Posted in nationaltransaction.com Tagged with: business, company, customer service, customers, management, organization, sales, sales targets
