Prime Factors, Inc.
Managing the cost, operational complexity, and risk of EMV migration is proving to require a delicate balance, and rushing can lead to unintended security risks.
(PRWEB) July 02, 2014
Prime Factors continues its free educational series on July 15, with the third EMV Advanced webinar “EMV Key Management.” The session covers the critical role that cryptographic keys play in EMV migration, the risks that they can pose to card issuers if not properly managed, and best practices for protecting such keys from accidental exposure or fraudulent use.
Recent surveys show that US card issuers’ reluctance to engage with the EMV migration faded in the wake of the Target®, Niemen Marcus®, and other recent breach disclosures. Alite Group, a Boston-based research firm, estimates that 70% of all US credit cards and 41% of all US debit cards will be EMV enabled by the end of 2015. The timing is critical as the card brands shift point-of-sale counterfeit fraud to merchants from banks and financial institutions, if the latter have issued EMV-compliant cards to their customers. Yet, many US banks and financial institutions have not yet begun issuing EMV-enabled plastics to their cardmembers.
“We are seeing greater and greater urgency applied to roll-out plans for EMV-compliant credit and debit cards,” says Prime Factors’ CEO, Patrick Riley. “Our BCSS EMV Data Preparation is an application development accelerator allowing our customers to expedite their entrance into the EMV marketplace, while reducing the cost, operational complexity and risk associated with migrating to EMV.”
In the webinar, payments industry veteran, Dave Tushie, underscores the importance of cryptographic keys and their secure management during EMV migration. A voting member of several EMV-related standards committees, Tushie describes the keys needed by various EMV environments and will speak in-depth on key generation and usage, including relationships between cards, terminals, issuers, and certificate authorities. He brings authority to this discussion, from his participation in defining the original EMV specifications and as co-founder of Ubiq, an early software development firm focused on the use of smart cards for electronic payments.
This is the fourth in Prime Factors’ EMV Migration webinar series, with the last session in this year’s free educational series, EMV Cardholder Verification Methods, scheduled for September 9. The three prior sessions in this series (EMV Basics, EMV Online Transaction Lifecycle, and EMV Implementation Options) are also available for on-demand replay.
More information about the webinar series, Prime Factors’ Bank Card Security Systems, and its other data protection products are available from the company’s website.
