Basic security rules still disregarded by the US companies

The Visa expert mentioned that companies do not manage to totally comply with the requirements of Payment Card Industry data security standards. Furthermore, there are a couple of basic security prevention measures that are not being taken into account, such as not changing a default password. A recent study by Verizon and Trustwave reveals poor password security as a persisting concern.

Apart from paying more attention to basic security rules, industries handling sensitive data need to perceive the federal government as a key partner, not an overseer that cannot be trusted. According to Nuala OConnor, president and CEO of the Center for Democracy and Technology, cited by the same media outlet, stated that the USD 172 million-plus cost that Target and its member banks have incurred to resolve the 2013 data breach should serve as an ongoing warning to other companies.

Experts agreed that efforts to de-value data should continue, as it has become increasingly apparent that hackers are persistent enough to find a way into almost any network.

They further declared that the industry effort to expand tokenization will help de-value the data. Tokenization replaces card data and account numbers with a unique string of characters known as a token.