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Unfortunately, identity theft can happen any time of year, to anyone. At myPCI, we work diligently with each and every one of our merchant services clients to do whatever we can to help reduce the risk of data or identity theft. With that said, there are a number of additional procedures that consumers can look for to further reduce the risk.

Dateline: Saskatchewan, Alberta, Canada: The Leader-Post Newspaper reports that police have uncovered a large skimming ring in that area.

After learning 600 cards were compromised in a large skimming ring in Canada, people who still have magnetic stripe debit or credit cards might be persuaded in switching to chip technology. According to police in the U.S. and Canada, card-skimming operations are becoming more and more popular. Skimming occurs when a person places a card-reading device in an ATM and skims the person’s banking information, then uses the information to make counterfeit cards in association with lucrative operations for crime rings.

For the successful growth of your business, security of data is of the utmost importance. You’ve probably already taken many steps and have daily procedures in place to help ensure the mitigation of the risk of data theft.

One of the best procedures you can practice is to ensure that your business is safe by continually keeping your credit card processing system up to date. An outdated POS system can cause more problems than just slow connections or issues with reliability. An outdated system can expose your customer’s credit card information and even your own banking information to “prying eyes”.

One of the most common questions that merchants ask is, “does PCI compliance mean that I am completely secure?” The answer is unfortunately, no. No matter the type of the business or the number of transactions processed, no business can be completely secure. However, each business can take steps to mitigate the majority of the risk associated with data breaches by becoming compliant, and following daily procedures to stay compliant.

Cyber criminals are taking aim at smaller merchants who are less likely to be compliant with PCI standards, according to a recent Verizon Business report by Jen Mack, a former member of the PCI Security Standards Council. The report found that the most common attack methods are malware and hacking, SQL injections, and exploitation of default or guessable credentials. Most data breaches happen because merchants fail to make sure that security mechanisms are properly deployed.