Recent figures from the UK Cards Association showed that banking industry initiatives, including PCI have been successful in decreasing the volume of card and bank account fraud. Payment card fraud losses in 2010 reached their lowest levels since 2000, and have made significant improvement from their all-time high just three years ago in 2008. Overall, they suggested that total fraud losses on UK cards fell by 17 percent alone over the preceding year.

Data protection laws in Europe are getting tougher, with Spain, Italy and Germany now requiring companies to notify customers of a privacy breach. Additionally, as companies take a broader look at business processes in the data-security context, PCI DSS is proving successful as a strong foundation for overall data security, with research pointing to the PCI Standards as effective in efforts to satisfy the European Data Protection Directive.

While significant progress has been made in the reduction of card fraud in Europe, more can be done. The unfortunate news is that there was still more than 417.5 million EUR in UK card fraud in 2010 – well over 1 million EUR per day! We also just saw a relatively sophisticated attack plot here in Spain, where an attack on mobile banking applications could also have spread to include card fraud. And while last year we saw a drop in fraud losses and a decline in breached data records, where will we end up as we enter into 2012?

The series of global, massive data breaches that have plagued organizations just this year proves that organizations involved in the payment chain are still being targeted and must take direct action to place security soundly into their day-to-day business efforts.


Although many organizations have tried to combat fraud and protect sensitive information through technology or processes, there is a third pillar - people - that is essential in order to be truly successful at securing card data. We can't simply rely on a single technology to solve the problems of data breaches in today's threat landscape. We need to continually examine the people, processes and technology we have in place to prevent future card fraud.

Some of the basic steps to reducing fraud combine these elements.

We should be looking to educate our people, then develop security procedures, strategy and implement technologies designed to reduce scope and reduce risk. Only through this will we be able to address the next critical juncture of payments security, especially in new payment technology areas such as mobile security, where everyone seems to want to jump to.

Here are a few of the tips I provide organisations when we are talking about moving toward more secure payment transactions, and which I’ll be discussing in more detail with security professionals at the annual ISACA Information Security and Risk Management (ISRM) Europe Conference in Barcelona, Spain on 14-16 November.