Retailers Fighting To No Longer Store Credit Data

Technical Writing Geek writes with the news that the retail industry is getting mighty fed up over credit card company policies requiring them to store payment data. The National Retail Federation (NRF) has gone to bat for store owners, asking the credit industry to change their policies. The frustration stems from payment card industry (PCI) standards and new security measures going into place across the retail experience. Retailers are now trying to point out that many of the elements of the standard would not be a requirement if they didn't have to store so much payment data. "Even if the NRF's demands were immediately met, it would take several years before retailers could purge their systems and applications of credit card data, he said. Over the years, retailers have collected and stored credit card data in myriad systems and places -- including relatively old legacy environments -- and they are just now realizing the data can be a challenge, he said. Purging it can be a bigger headache because the data is often inextricably linked to and used by a variety of customer and marketing applications; simply removing it could cause huge disruptions."

Comments

While were at it

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's ditch social security numbers too. Once we purge everything, we can come up with a new, unique, impervious to fraud, uncrackable new id for each person and their various accounts.

Data Theft

[KGIII]

And if they didn't store the data then we wouldn't have the TJ Maxx crap like stuff going on in the first place. Storing it should be illegal - encrypted or not. There is no reason that numbers need to be stored - even for subscriptions. If worse comes to worse then get the lazy bastards to re-swipe or re-enter the card data.

Re:Data Theft

[CastrTroy]

I had a professor in univesity for one of my security classes. Basically, he told us that SSL, while it's good at what it does, doesn't really solve the real security issues with transactions happening over the internet. Nobody sniffs the wire or does man in the middle attacks to collect the data, because it's often very difficult, and requires physical access to cables. What they usually do is just break into the back end database that's storing all this data. It's much easier. Him and some of his colleagues came up with a much better system, whereby the credit card info never went to the retailer, but instead just a digital certificate signed by the credit card company that would authorize a payment for some certain amount. In the end, the industry decided not to go with that standard, because it was harder to implement. It solved the real problem, but SSL was adopted because they figured it was good enough. It's interesting to see that decision coming back when if they would have just done it right the first time, we'd have much less problems.

Re:Data Theft

[geekoid]

That professor needs to get with the times:
"Nobody sniffs the wire or does man in the middle attacks to collect the data, because it's often very difficult, and requires physical access to cables."

No, usually a bot is placed in a router that does it for you. There is very little need to be physically at the wire it most cases, anymore.

OTOH, since his 'better method' was only better under the fallacy that no one watches the line.
As someone who has written sniffer to ferret out unauthorized movement of SSN within an organization, I can honestly say that I never physically went to any router or box to do the install.

Actually, now that I am thinking about it(it's been 10 years) I didn't physically go to one location.

I took a switch/router that I installed the bot on and physically unpluged a network cable, plugged it into this router and then plug a cable from the router to the port. No one monitoring the network noticed anything. It took me about 4 seconds to add the switch.

That was done on a bet.

Re:Data Theft

[heckler95]

I would much rather trust PayPal's servers than every little Mom & Pop business with an e-commerce website that they hired the local high school wiz-kid to create on $4/month shared hosting. N.B. I used to be that wiz-kid.

All about shifting liability

[gclef]

I would be *very* surprised if the banks voluntarily accepted liability for any part of this chain. They face none now...they'll need a very strong reason to take any risk. The banks like the present system because they face no liability...if the merchant didn't do the right thing, or faces a chargeback, it's all on the merchant. (and it's on the merchant for liability if they're hacked)

Wait what?

[techpawn]

several years before retailers could purge their systems and applications of credit card data

TRUNCATE TABLE Customer Data

There ya go!

Re:Well

[MortimerV]

Why should the credit card data have to be stored by both the retailer and the CC company?

Let the CC company keep a transaction ID and all confidential information, and the retailer keeps the same transaction ID, along with purchase details. That puts the burden of security all in one place, with the CC company, rather than scattered around with all the various retailers.

And if there's a trail to be followed, the CC company and retailer can compare records through the transaction ID.

Several Issues

[wardred]

There are at least two issues with credit card data based on this article. I definitely like the retailer's NOT storing full credit card data. The credit card type, possibly the bank, the card holder's name, the last few digits of the credit card number, and the charge date and time should be more than enough to identify a transaction, especially if there's a transaction id. The credit card companies HAVE to have full account data, but the more systems this data is stored in, the less secure it is, no matter what security is implemented at each individual site. If you can remove the bank and CC number entirely and work strictly off of transaction ID and card type, I'd be even happier. Storing this minimum of data would allow everybody to identify a particular charge if there's a dispute about charges, would still allow retailers to generate whatever statistical data they need, and would prevent identity thieves from getting full CC numbers, expiration dates, etc. from retailers.

On the other hand, retailers still need to secure whatever legacy data they have, and work on purging the systems that store it. These are two different problems, and both sides of this debate seem to want to point out the problems with their opponent's positions without addressing their own issues. If retailers have the data and aren't securing it, then I have little sympathy for them when they get heavily fined for not treating our sensitive data properly, even if the CC companies require the storage of some of that data and shouldn't. Especially for major retailers where the IT budget can be spread across many, many stores.

So, short term solution is to get the retail stores to abide by the current security regulations posted by CC companies. The longer term solution is to get a more sane set of security solutions from the CC companies, and make it so that every retail outlet is required NOT to store sensitive data that crackers might want to get a hold of. This would reduce the number of outlets to our sensitive data to a minimum. It would reduce it to the companies that have to retain that data anyway.

Speaking from experience...

[MattyMatt]

I've been working with a PCI certified auditor for close to nine months now to bring my company into compliance with the latest Data Security Standard. The DSS is a great source if you're looking for a concise primer on good development, administration and training practices, but... Bringing a company into compliance with all the requirements is incredibly difficult. No exaggeration, we've spent tens of thousands of dollars on the audit itself, tens of thousands more on infrastructure and the equivalent of one full time employee working on nothing but DSS compliance for the past year. Once we receive the stamp of compliance from the Payment Card Industry, we just have to turn around and do it all over again next year, the following year, the year after that, etc... Granted, once we get through the first audit, the following audits will be less expensive from a time and money perspective, but we're still looking at anywhere from ten to fifty grand a year for the certified auditor and any DSS mandated changes to our system. For example, the DSS requires for 2008 either an application layer firewall in front of web-facing apps or third-party code review. There goes my bonus for next year... Long story short - very few companies are going to be able to meet the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and on top of that, most companies don't want to store freakin' payment card anyway.

It's very simple

[sjames]

In spite of the smokescreen being thrown up by the big credit cards, it's really very simple.

The banks ALREADY have and must keep all of the information. Their byzantine PCI standards demand that the merchants keep a full duplicate of this highly sensitive data and dictate how it must be stored. The merchants maintain (correctly) that if the banks had as much intelligence as a slug all they would need to retain is non-sensitive (and useless to identity thieves) transaction/approval numbers rather than very sensitive cc numbers and identifying info.

In other words, in spite of what the banks claim, this is about reducing the risks and liabilities rather than shifting them. In fact, it's the banks that are trying to spread liability by maintaining a situation where they can plausibly play the blame game.

Various schemes have been available for DECADES to make sure that fraudulant credit transactions can not happen but the banks have fought against them tooth and nail in order to keep the current approach where name and cc number are all that's needed to commit fraud. They're also the ones that have been routinely offering big limit credit cards to toddlers, dogs, and cats then trying to stick innocent 3rd parties with the liabilities.

The entire identity theft problem only exists because of the very same banks. I'll bet that it would all stop instantly if a law was passed banning any attempt at collections for credit card debt unless the bank can present a picture of the alleged debtor actually signing the agreement for the account AND that without a digital transaction signature, the cardholder is presumed NOT to be liable for the charge. You can be assured that credit cards with useful smart chips and public key signature capability would be implemented the INSTANT such a law went into effect.

Please feel free to visualise (or not!) an analogy involving identity thieves, defrauded individuals, bank managers and goatse.