Secure Point of Sales Transactions With Point to Point Encryption

Over the past few years, several security breaches have made headlines and resulted in compromised data for millions of customers. Data is particularly vulnerable at point of sale (POS) when customers insert or swipe their cards. With this in mind, how can software providers safeguard their payment processing systems against hackers?

Security Standards

An organization called the PCI Security Standards Council, founded by several major payment brands,  establishes the global standards for securely processing transactions. One such standard includes point-to-point encryption (P2PE). Utilizing P2PE simplifies PCI Data Security Standard compliance for companies and covers many of the Council’s requirements.

Point to Point Encryption

P2PE encrypts data when a card is entered into a hardware device such as:

• Keypads
• Magnetic stripe readers
• Chip card readers (EMV)

A good analogy is a locked box. The data is locked right as it’s received, and then sent where it needs to go by the payment processor. Once the data is received at intended institution, the data is decrypted or “unlocked.” Best of all, this all occurs in seconds and there is no delay for the waiting consumer.

Devaluation of Data

The main goal of point to point encryption is to render the data useless to hackers rather than trying to prevent a system breach in the first place. To reference the earlier analogy, even if cyber crooks get a hold of the locked box of data, it’s useless without the key. In fact, the software tools used to decrypt data are literally referred to as “keys,” which are constantly rotated and safeguarded. This added measure ensures that keys are safe from hackers and the data remains inaccessible.

In the past few years, card not present fraud has been on the rise. Merchants and software providers have the responsibility to secure their POS transactions and keep their customers’ information safe. Paragon Payment Solutions partners with software providers to enable payments and increase transaction security through solutions like P2PE. Let us introduce you to the best in secure payment processing.