FFIEC Guidance: Why Did This Take So Long?
The updated Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) guidance on online fraud mitigation has finally been released. My first reaction: Why did this take more than six months to...
View ArticleComing to America: EMV
While it’s been a long time coming, it looks like EMV is finally headed for the U.S. market. In a recent Aite Group survey of 76 card security risk management executives, the majority of respondents...
View ArticleWhy So Much Cybercrime? A Freakonomics Quorum Discussion
Freakonomics recently asked me to contribute to a quorum discussion on the rise of hacking and cybercrime. The premise was this: Why has there been such a spike in hacking recently? Or is it merely a...
View ArticleThe EMV Train Is Picking Up Steam
MasterCard is the latest network to add its weight behind EMV (Europay, MasterCard, and Visa) in the United States. While details remain scant, a number of industry sources say that MasterCard issued...
View ArticleParents, Raise Your Shields!
I was speaking with the fraud-prevention head of a large U.S. financial institution yesterday, and I asked him about the root causes of the biggest pain points for his bank. He named two of the usual...
View ArticleAuction Triangulation: The Bad Guys Do Their Homework
Yet another sign that the bad guys do their homework is manifest in the increasing sophistication of auction triangulation fraud. At the first annual Threatmetrix user conference this week, a fraud...
View ArticleSOPA, PIPA, and the Law of Unintended Consequences
Everyone heading to Wikipedia on January 18 to get the latest factoid on Pippa Middleton had an unpleasant surprise. In protest of another PIPA, the proposed U.S. Senate legislation known as the...
View ArticleQuick! Learn Some Russian!
Yesterday, I was giving a webinar with the Head of the RSA FraudAction Research Labs, Etay Maor. He shared some interesting intelligence about Citadel, one of the latest ZeuS offspring. The RSA...
View ArticleAlphabet Soup: EMV 4 ATMs
In the wake of network announcements that heralded the imminent arrival of EMV to the U.S. market, today’s development will bring greater security to an ATM near you. MasterCard has announced its plan...
View ArticleEMV: The Train Has Left the Station!
EMV is coming! EMV is coming! While this cry doesn’t have quite the impact of Paul Revere on his fateful ride, it does represent a significant evolution for the U.S. payments infrastructure. As the...
View ArticleFor Bitcoin, a Roller Coaster With a Silver Lining?
Establishing a new, non-sovereign digital currency is not for the faint of heart. Bitcoin, the poster child for cryptocurrencies, has weathered a barrage of ups and downs over the last six months as...
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