The Importance of Protecting Customer Financial Information

Thursday, October 30, 2014

News that another retailer has experienced a data breech that compromises personal and financial customer data in some way, shape or form is becoming an all-to-frequent occurrence.

A recent survey by Honeywell, a major manufacturer of POS equipment, reveals that consumers have a higher degree of concern for the security of their financial information than they do for their health and other important areas of life. This seems illogical at first glance, but when you think about it for a bit, you realise that you can some degree of influence over your state of health or the safety of other possessions, but short of not enjoying the convenience of credit and debit card transactions, you have essentially no control over what happens to financial information once it gets turned over to a merchant of some desired product or service.

Judging from the frequency of these occurrences of data hacking, it would seem to be the age-old case of those with larceny on their minds always devising ways to get ahead of those charged with the task of thwarting them. This game of technological leap frog has been going on since the introduction of credit and debit cards.

The latest innovation that seems to hold at least temporary promise is data encryption technology that is designed to add a new level of security to debit and credit card transactions. The basic concept is that by encrypting the information, even if the unique data associated with a transaction is intercepted, it cannot be used for additional transactions.

Participants of the survey indicated that they felt that retailers could do more to protect personal financial information. They also claimed that they would be more likely to frequent businesses that used the latest technology to encrypt their information in order to reduce the potential of information being hacked and used for illicit purposes.