Providers of payment solutions to customer facing businesses need to constantly provide technology that effectively combats the highly sophisticated and ever evolving attacks of cybercrime into their payment solution architecture.

Vaughan Alexander, adumo Chief Technology Officer noted, “Providing anti-malware payment architecture to our clients has always been front of mind. A successful malware attack into our client’s payments architecture could result in huge reputational damage to their business and also provide endless frustration to the card holder whose details have been stolen and consequently used in fraudulent purchases or activities”.

The fact that cybercrime is ever evolving and increasingly more intelligent is the reason that adumo decided to undertake a “defence-in-depth” strategy and segregate their payment system products, such that the payment device is not wholly connected to the electronic cash register.  

Alexander explains, “The entire payments architecture is still integrated from the payment device to the electronic cash register (‘ECR’) but the networks are separated, such that PIN entry device data is not linked to rest of the point of sale hardware”.

An alternative defence protection method that merchants may choose to use, because of the simplicity and lower cost, is encryption based protection, which would be the first line of defence against cyber-attacks. Alexander noted that “this method of defence can still leave merchants vulnerable and doesn’t provide a multi-layer defence strategy that a defence-in depth approach inclusive of a segregated architecture does”.

The segregation would defend a merchant in an attempted attack of the recently detected Prilex malware, which International cyber security firm, Kaspersky uncovered in Brazil.

Alexander suggested that all merchants become familiar with their anti-malware software, making sure it is up to date with the latest malware signatures, and best of breed. “It is often seen as a grudge purchase but it could be the insurance that saves the reputation of their businesses” he notes.

Similarly, Alexander encourages all customers to check their card balances at month end to reconcile all payments recorded, and so unearth any unknown payments soon.

‍

Louise Brugman 083 504 1186

On behalf of Vaughan Alexander, adumo Chief Technology Officer