Forest Global Training Partners

Cyber Risks · Krebs on Security

Why So Many Card Breaches? A Q&A

Summary: Krebs on Security reported in August 2014 that AB Acquisition, which operates Albertsons stores under brands including ACME Markets, Jewel-Osco, Shaw's and Star Markets, was the apparent victim of another major card breach. The post explains that cards stolen from bricks-and-mortar stores, called dumps, sell for at least ten times the price of cards stolen from online merchants, and that in the Target breach the perpetrators sold only about 2-4 percent of the 40 million cards stolen while banks saw fraud on only 3-7 percent of compromised cards.

Bottom line: Even a 2-4 percent sales ratio on millions of cards selling for $10 to $30 each is still a lot of money, and banks shoulder much of the immediate cost while needing to tie specific compromised cards to specific merchant breaches to recover through Visa and MasterCard programs. The October 2015 chip-and-PIN deadline shifts liability onto merchants not in compliance, leaving smaller merchants the likely next target as fraud drifts downmarket.

Read the original at Krebs on Security ↗

Topics
Data Breaches
Related