Preventing Security Breaches: Reducing Merchant Risk

Data breaches are a continual risk for companies of all sizes that must maintain customer data. The situation has now evolved into a question of not if a business will become the victim of a data breach, but when and how many times it will happen. A data breach is defined as, “the intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential information to an untrusted environment.

The number of high-profile data breach cases making their way into the news serves to underscore that no business, large or small, is immune to the risk of such a breach. According to the Breach Level Index, “945 data breaches led to 4.5 billion data records being compromised worldwide in the first half of 2018.” Security is a top priority for us here at EVO and that is why over the next three newsletters, we will explore this topic in detail, starting with how data breaches occur and how resellers can arm their merchants to reduce risk.

How Data Breaches Occur

While the effects of a breach can be significant, there are steps that merchants can take to safeguard their most sensitive data while reducing the risk of a data breach. One of the most important steps that a merchant can take is to understand how such a vulnerability can occur. Criminals have developed more sophisticated methods for taking advantage of vulnerabilities inherent to payment systems.