BASKING RIDGE, N.J.—Attacks on point of sale systems are declining as a percentage of overall breaches, according to Verizon.
According to the company’s 2017 Data Breach Investigations Report, this year POS attacks have made up just 6.7% of overall breaches tracked by the company, down from a high of 45.4% in 2011.
“Even so, there are still lots of these thefts, in which criminals insert malicious software into a company's point-of-sale system,” noted USA Today, which cited several reasons that retailers are still losing the battle against cyber crooks.
In 2016, each stolen record cost retailers $172 to deal with, according to a study commissioned by IBM, USA Today said.
“One problem is that many retail companies are slow to install software patches, even for known security problems, because they fear the patches might disable their POS software or terminals, causing them to miss sales,” the newspaper stated.
As CUToday.info reported, Chipotle, Arby’s and Kmart were all attacked in recent months.
Why are many retailers still vulnerable?
“Time and money,” said USA Today. “It takes time for companies to rebuild point of sale systems more securely and shift from magnetic stripe credit and debit cards to more secure chip cards. They need money to hire tech staff to secure those networks, money to buy software to do the securing and money to buy new, encrypted point-of-sale machines.”