With businesses and individuals relying more and more on digital payment methods, security has gone to the top of the list for companies to ensure. They are on the rise with payment fraud and data breaches, and companies must protect their financial transactions and customer data. A leading telecommunications company, Verizon understands the significance of payment security and has made great strides to protect the payments made through its services. In this article, we will talk about the Verizon Payment Security Report, where it matters, and how it can be used to strengthen your security policies to protect your payment systems.
What is the Verizon Payment Security Report?
Verizon’s annual Verizon Payment Security Report looks at the current state of payment security across industries. This report contains in-depth analysis and insights on how effective security measures are, what challenges businesses are experiencing, and what evolving threats we are facing in our payment processing landscape.
Verizon Payment Security Report aims to offer businesses, financial institutions, and other stakeholders data-driven recommendations to enhance their payment security practices. It is a great resource for companies that wish to understand what the current threat environment is and how to best protect themselves against fraud and breaches.
The report includes findings related to:
1- Compliance: Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance and other similar regulations – How businesses are conforming to the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).
2- Security Challenges: Common vulnerabilities and weaknesses in securing payment data (aka security challenges).
3- Best Practices: Recommendations and strategies to improve payment security and prevent fraud are listed in Best Practices.
4- Insights: Emerging threats related to technology in enhancing security, new types of cyber attacks, and payment fraud methods.
The Importance of Payment Security
Both businesses and consumers need payment security. With digital transactions continuing to grow, more sensitive data is being transmitted online meaning it is a prime target for cybercriminals. Breach, fraud, identity theft, etc. can be financially and reputational costly to businesses. According to the Verizon Payment Security Report, companies that fail to implement adequate security measures are at a higher risk of data breaches, which can result in:
1- Direct Financial Losses: Cybercriminals may steal funds directly from business accounts or participate in fraudulent transactions resulting in substantial financial losses.
2- Damage to Reputation: A breach can harm a company’s reputation and customers can start to lose trust in the brand. It can be quite difficult to get over this loss of trust.
3- Cost: Failing to observe industry regulations can lead to heavy fines, legal consequences, and potentially severing any relationship with your clients or business, all the more reason to keep up with the standards.
The Verizon Payment Security Report underscores the necessity for organizations to take appropriate measures to safeguard payment data, diminish susceptibilities, and uphold commonplace industry standards.
Key Findings from the Verizon Payment Security Report
The Verizon Payment Security Report, published annually, is full of valuable information on payment security across industries. Here are some of the key findings from the report:
1- Compliance Challenges: Many organizations such as PI DSS still face compliance challenges. Even though businesses are improving, a large proportion of the businesses are not completely compliant with the PCI DSS requirements and are therefore open to attacks.
2- Payment Fraud: Fraud threats are increasing, with payment fraud becoming more sophisticated and exploiting ever-new vulnerabilities. It’s found that businesses in sectors like retail, healthcare, and finance are most at risk.
3- Insider Threats: While the report acknowledges that insider threats, which encompass employee negligence or malicious actions, continue to be a key concern to businesses, however, they don’t provide any strategies for managing or verifying that a user has the right amount of access. Payment systems or sensitive data can be compromised by employees who have access to it, consciously or unconsciously.
4- Advanced Technologies: Advanced technologies, including tokenization, encryption and multi-factor authentication (MFA) are being adopted but there are still many businesses that aren’t leveraging them fully. These technologies can greatly enhance the security of payments by securing the data during payment.
5- Lack of Resources: There are simply not enough resources – Small and medium-sized businesses, in particular, don’t have sufficient resources to have their entire organization protected by comprehensive security. The report points to a lack of education, training, and security tools investment to fill these gaps.
How to Improve Payment Security Based on the Verizon Payment Security Report
The Verizon Payment Security Report offers actionable insights for businesses to better protect their payment security and lower the risk of fraud. Below are some of the most important recommendations and best practices for securing payment data:
1- Ensure you are fully PCI DSS Compliant:
Something that a business should prioritize is that they are completely PCI DSS compliant. These standards help ensure compliance which, in turn, protects sensitive payment data and standards of encrypted, access controls, and regular audits. According to the Verizon Payment Security Report, the most important thing businesses can do to prevent breaches is to get, keep, and prove PCI DSS compliance.
2- Encrypt (Payment Data During Transmission) And Tokenize:
One of the more critical ways to protect against unauthorized access (and data breaches) is to encrypt payment data that is transmitted and stored securely. Another great way to minimize the risk of data breaches is through tokenization—replacing sensitive payment information with unique identifiers (tokens). Customer data can be just as protected from a cyberattack with both encryption and tokenization.
3- Use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA):
Multi-factor authentication also offers… Verizon Payment Security Report points out that MFA must be implemented for employees, administrators, and customers to help reduce the risk of unauthorized access.
4- Continuous Monitoring and Testing:
Continuously Monitoring and Testing of the security systems are essential to find the vulnerabilities and not to be susceptible to the attack. Regular penetration testing, vulnerability scanning, and security audits will help a business find the weaknesses in its payment system and sort out those issues before cyber criminals exploit it.
5- Educate Employees and Customers:
Employees should be trained on the importance of payment security and what to look out for when an e-mail may be an attempt at phishing, or other social engineering attacks. Customers should also be educated. Therefore, customers need to be educated about the necessity to use strong passwords and not go to sites that seem suspect. Maintaining payment security takes place both internally and externally.
6- Stay Updated on Emerging Threats:
Businesses must Stay Updated on New Threats and Security Trends in the Payment industry – The Verizon Payment Security Report. Cybercriminals are always finding new ways to attack, and because businesses always are evolving to stay ahead of increasing risks, companies must evolve to remain ahead of new emerging risks in payment systems.
The Role of Verizon in Payment Security
Verizon falls short of nothing in its promise to make businesses better protected through payment security services and solutions. Some of Verizon’s offerings include:
1- Verizon delivers trusted Secure Payment Solutions: Verifying identity, encrypting, and tokenizing payment processing.
2- Verizon Consulting & Advisory Services: Verizon’s team of security experts will help businesses find and close vulnerabilities; implement security measures; and prove compliance with PCI DSS.
3- Network Security: The Verizon network security solution assists businesses by delivering firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and a plethora of other utilities to defend against unauthorized access.
Conclusion
The Verizon Payment Security Report is an outstanding resource for businesses that seek to strengthen their payment security and lower the risk of fraud and data breaches. The report features critical insights into payment security, business challenges, and the best practices to secure payment data.
Verizon Payment Security Report provides businesses with knowledge of the identified payment security risks and ensures the integration of suggested methods for the protection of their payment systems. Payment security is no finish line—and the Verizon Payment Security Report equips businesses with the knowledge they need to keep playing in the game of staying ahead of emerging threats to protect their payment environment.