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The squabbling over who is responsible for the massive data breach at Target stores resumed Thursday when a group representing retail banks rolled out a new set of numbers detailing how much the breach has cost banks.
February 6 -
The latest investigation into the massive data breach at Target has found that hackers entered the retailer's network by stealing a vendor's password and then patiently waited until the busy holiday season to strike.
February 11 -
How could this happen? Why is the U.S. payments industry still using archaic and notoriously insecure magnetic stripe card technology? And will the episode change anything? American Banker answers frequently asked questions about the Target breach.
January 22
Editor's Note: This post originally appeared on
Retail giant Target Corp.'s headache-inducing
Johnson & Johnson achieved all this with a relatively simple trick: introducing
Even before the massive Target breach, the U.S. payments industry was on the path to replacing the aging magnetic-stripe card with a counterfeit-proof EMV "chip and PIN" version. Merchants, banks and processors are also considering options such as
U.S. merchants are currently under pressure from major card brands like Visa and MasterCard to accept EMV-equipped cards by October 2015. Target has indicated it plans to deploy EMV-capable terminals
But is EMV really the answer? Its main security benefit is deterring duplication of physical cards. The chips are of no use in so-called card-not-present transactions involving online and mobile commerce. Whats more, a U.S. court ruling has muddied the legal landscape for use of EMV chips with debit cards and is likely to postpone adoption in this giant market.
EMV alternatives, including encryption and tokenization, had their own Tylenol moment four years ago. Thats when processor
That raises the question: Will this time be different and Target become the payment industrys Tylenol?
Maybe. Before the Target breach, many merchants were apparently willing to
For their part, Visa and MasterCard have
Daniel Wolfe is Editor in Chief of