Home Depot, Mandarin Oriental, and Staples have all suffered significant losses following security breaches affected their Point of Sale systems.
Such breaches are becoming increasingly common and while the big names grab the headlines, smaller retailers and hospitality firms are most likely to be affected.
The Ponemon Institute’s Cost of Data Breach Study estimates that the average cost of a POS security breach is $3.5 million – more than enough to bring a small or medium-sized business to its knees.
Unsurprisingly, the credit card data stored – albeit briefly – by such systems is highly valuable for hackers. On top of this, many companies are more or less handing them the tools to do so by failing to arm themselves with adequate protection: the PCI DSS mandates the need for system hardening and PCI File Integrity Monitoring, but too few retailers operate these requirements sufficiently well.
You can read the full story on Information Age here.