SAN FRANCISCO – Let’s face it, 2014 was a terrible year for computer security, leaving everyone feeling a little more vulnerable. Hackers stole 56 million credit card numbers and 53 million email addresses from Home Depot between April and September. They took contact information for 76 million households and 7 million small businesses from JPMorgan’s vaults. And Target started the year on the wrong foot, coughing up 40 million credit and debit cards, and personal information on 110 million people.
“It’d be hard to find anybody in the US who hasn’t had a credit card affected,” said H.D. Moore, chief research officer at security firm Rapid7. “People are just numb to the fact.”
Will 2015 be the year we learn to care about who to trust with our personal data? Experts have some dour thoughts on what’s coming, even as US stores begin to support credit cards with more secure computer chips. There’s going to be heightened risks from old threats like email phishing attacks, and new threats posed by the Internet of Things, the idea of having appliances, objects, and electronic devices all connected to each other and the Internet. Here’s what to expect next year.
Smarter credit cards
Credit cards containing a computer chip and requiring a separate personal identification number are commonplace in many other developed countries, but have been held back in the US in large part because of the costs. Financial institutions have to pay more to make the new cards, and it’s expensive for retailers to upgrade their payment terminals to accepted chipped cards. But they are expected to decrease some types of credit card fraud, a problem with current swipe-and-signature cards, because the chips are harder to counterfeit, according to a report from the financial research firm Aite Group. The equipment required to clone a chipped card the way counterfeiters currently fake magnetic stripe cards can cost around $1 million, according to mobile payment company Square.
