Executives must ensure ACH cards, mobile payments are secured

Electronic payments continue to gain more traction in a variety of sectors, regions and demographics, especially as smartphones and tablets become the devices of choice for consumers. Business owners need to ensure that they are capable of offering certain related services, such as ACH cards and mobile payment processing, while also maintaining stringent security standards.

BankInfoSecurity recently spoke to Gartner analyst Anton Chuvakin regarding his projections for the financial data security arena going into the new year. As threats continue to proliferate and target a wide variety of common vulnerabilities among organizations, leaders must ensure that they are staying a step ahead of their opponents to sustain financial and brand stability.

This often demands stepping outside of the bare minimum approach and into a more comprehensive and proactive strategy. According to the news provider, Chuvakin asserted that mobile security threats will be the biggest cause for concern among organizations that are trying to protect financial data in the next year, surpassing the fear related to cloud computing.

The source explained that the expert was especially avid about financial services providers incorporating more thorough and effective defenses on electronic payment processing capabilities. Because these firms are the most at risk of losing sensitive consumer and corporate financial data, they must also be the most aggressive in the pursuit of security.

Regardless of which sector an organization might operate within, it will likely encounter several opportunities such as electronic payment processing, mobility and automated transaction management. These trends can be helpful when leveraged to boost efficiency, but still require long term and well-informed security strategies to adequately protect employees, consumers and the business itself.

Most firms benefit from training employees in security best practices as they relate to financial data, while all should deploy standard loss prevention software and firewalls to protect the digital infrastructure.