What Is Credit Card Security?

Credit card security is the set of protocols, technologies, and best practices that businesses rely on to protect credit card information that is processed or stored within an IT environment. Trends such as contactless payments and card-not-present transactions for online shopping have enabled a rise in credit card fraud and other types of financial crime. Credit card security solutions help organizations to protect sensitive financial information, mitigate the loss of credit card data, prevent credit card fraud, and avoid adverse outcomes such as regulatory fines, legal action, and losses to revenue, reputation, and customer trust.

Credit card security is a major concern for retailers and businesses that process credit cards, as well as credit card issuers, financial institutions, and major credit card companies, including Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express. While new cards have security features such as EMV chips designed to improve credit card security, criminals are constantly finding new ways to steal credit card account numbers and perform fraudulent credit card transactions.

• Card-not-present fraud. One of the fastest-growing threats to credit card security, card-not-present fraud occurs when a criminal makes online purchases or purchases over the phone with stolen credit card information.
• Skimming scams. Criminals often place skimmers on point-of-sale devices to steal account information when a customer or employee swipes a credit card. Skimming can also happen in online transactions. For example, Magecart attacks take advantage of third-party vulnerabilities in ecommerce platforms that allow attackers to inject malicious code into a payment page within a browser. When a visitor to the site enters their payment card details, the malicious code skims the information and sends it to a domain controlled by the attacker.
• Phishing. In these attacks, fraudsters pose as a legitimate contact, company, or service and convince consumers to reveal their credit card number and other sensitive information.
• Application fraud. In this form of identity theft, criminals may use stolen information to apply for a credit card in someone else’s name. This type of fraud may go undetected until the victim checks their credit report or notices a change in their credit score.
• Data breaches. When attackers are able to successfully access an organization’s IT environment, they may download large amounts of customer data that include personally identifiable information such as Social Security numbers, as well as debit card or credit card numbers and CVV or CID numbers — the three or four digits on the back of the card designed to increase security.

Credit card security and fraud protection typically involve a multilayered approach to preventing, detecting, and responding to fraud and other threats.

• Encryption. By encrypting data with protocols such as SSL and TLS, organizations can securely transmit payment data without fear of interception or tampering.
• Tokenization. When transmitting credit card information, tokenization is the process of replacing sensitive card information with a randomized string of numbers and letters — known as a token — which can only be correctly read by a payment processor. Tokenization bolsters credit card security and ecommerce transactions while reducing the cost and complexity of complying with regulations and industry standards.
• Authentication. Using single-factor, two-factor, or multi-factor authentication (MFA) helps ensure that individuals presenting credit cards for payment are indeed authorized users. MFA involves the use of two or more types of authentication, including passwords, pins, one-time codes, biometric data, security questions, and physical tokens.
• Fraud detection and prevention systems. These technologies recognize and block fraudulent transactions by monitoring customer behavior, identifying transaction patterns, and detecting anomalies. When detecting potential fraud, these solutions can block transactions or require additional authentication measures.
• PCI DSS compliance. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) outlines a set of standards for protecting customer data and reducing the risk of data breaches. Businesses that comply with PCI DSS standards are better able to process, store, and transmit credit card information securely.
• Firewalls and network security. Firewalls and other network and web security technologies help organizations improve credit card security by blocking external threats like malware and threat actors attempting to gain access to IT environments. Firewalls scan and monitor traffic and enforce security policies to block potential threats. Intrusion detection and prevention systems identify possible intrusions and continuously monitor network activity. Segmentation and microsegmentation solutions divide IT networks and assets into smaller units to limit the potential “blast radius” of a successful cyberattack.
• Client-side protection. Client-side protection can prevent client-side attacks such as Magecart, web skimming, and formjacking.
• Data loss prevention (DLP). DLP solutions protect sensitive information like credit card data from being maliciously or inadvertently leaked, exposed, or stolen. Using contextual scanning and content inspection, DLP solutions search data flowing in and out of the network and block traffic containing cardholder information, personally identifiable information (PII), and other types of sensitive data.
• Security updates. Maintaining a regular and consistent cadence for fixing vulnerabilities, applying patches, and implementing security updates is essential to preventing attackers from exploiting vulnerabilities, bugs, and security issues in software, hardware, and operating systems.

Application programming interfaces, or APIs, are often the weakest link in the chain when it comes to credit card security. APIs are software programs or bits of code that enable applications to communicate with each other and share data and functionality. As more APIs are built and used to share sensitive data like credit card data, organizations introduce more risk. These security gaps leave the door open for attackers to gain unauthorized access to APIs and connected systems. As a result of these data breaches, credit card data of customers may be leaked or stolen.

Most importantly, ensure that any API protections you are using are PCI DSS compliant. This can help provide confidence that the solutions you are putting in place are themselves following best practices for handling credit card data. In order to determine which security solutions you need, the first thing to keep in mind is that API protection requires a multilayered approach to security. An API gateway can help to authorize and route calls to appropriate back-end services and front-end endpoints while also applying rate limiting and throttling to prevent API abuse. Security teams may also need to implement encryption, authentication and authorization technologies, web application firewalls, OpenAPI security schemes, and tools for discovering APIs and identifying vulnerabilities. However, API gateway security is not enough to block the type of attacks that are part of the OWASP API Security Top 10. First, organizations need to ensure they have a full inventory of their APIs and are able to label these APIs according to whether or not they contain sensitive data, like credit card information. Then, they should use behavioral analytics to monitor all API activity to make sure that those APIs are sharing data in expected ways and alerting on any abnormal behavior.