Securing Your Point Of Sale Equipment
On credit card commercials, we can see a line of dancing shoppers merrily swiping their credit cards, from store to store, and glorifyhow convenient it is to use, they do not care to discuss the risk of identify theft at the cash register.
Monica Chauhan, director of embedded solutions for Solidcore (www.solidcore.com), a leading provider of real-time change control software, cites Gartner Group statistics showing that four out of five data breaches occur at POS (point-of-sale) systems.
Lock It Down
These Point of Sale systems are vulnerable to exploitation if not properly locked down. “For decades, embedded devices consisted of specialized hardware running proprietary software, but in recent times, there has been a shift towards standardization, such as Unified Point of Sale (UPoS) in the retail industry.”
“Standardization has enabled devices to become increasingly interconnected and has allowed for the use of off-the-shelf software on commoditized hardware running commercial or open operating systems, such as Windows XP Embedded, WEPOS (Windows Embedded for Point of Service), and Linux,” Chauhan observes.
According to Chauhan, greater system flexibility and quicker development time has created security risks for POS equipment owners.
Some Systems Are Vulnerable
From Robert J. McCullen, chairman and CEO of Trustwave (www.trustwave.com) – a security firm specializing in information security and compliance management solutions, agrees with Chauhan that there are many, but not all, POS systems that are susceptible to attacks.
“A little dial-up swipe machine is a low-risk device,” McCullen says. “POS equipment more prone to vulnerable exploitation are those that are computer-based and/or have Internet access; the risk lies in those two prime factors.”
If a POS system stores credit card track data, exploitation can occur, and swipe terminals can be tampered, according to McCullen.
“Generally, hardware swipe terminals have low exploit risk, rather a higher risk of tampering, and thus the tampering will allow hackers to read the cards, whether through a Bluetooth device used later to get the card data or other efforts to retrieve the information,” McCullen explains.
Chauhan points out other vulnerabilities. She claims that because today’s POS systems are similar to networked PCs, they require constant patching. She included that embedded systems have also become vulnerable to changes that are unauthorized and inappropriate as they are handed off to others in the distribution channel. With these, it often results to malfunctions and can cause the equipment to no longer meet PCI DSS (PCI Data Security Standard) requirements.
The Challenges With PCI DSS
Both Chauhan and McCullen agreed that POS equipment is faced with unique challenges with its PCI DSS compliance.
PCI DSS requirement 5 states that a regularly updated antivirust software must be used, according to Chauhan. Antivirus software can be an overhead expense on a low-footprint POS system, she even notes; inspite of that, the need for an antivirus software can be eliminated with a change control software.
As an example, NEC Infrontia installed and uses a change control software on its POS offerings which prevented unauthorized code from breaking unpatched systems. With this software, it allowed NEC Infrontia to remove the antivirus software that was impacting the performance of their devices, according to Chauhan.
PCI DSS Requirement 6, “Develop and maintain secure systems and applications,” presents unique challenges, Chauhan notes.
It’ll be a very challenging on the part of POS equipment providers to ensure their systems supplies the PCI compliance after shipping them to the dealer network and put into production at the retail location.
According to Chauhan, StoreNext (www.storenext.com), a large supplier of technology and POS systems for independent grocers and small chains, solved PCI DSS Requirement 6 patching challenges by embedding Solidcore change control in its systems.
In addition, the amount of time spent was reduced by StoreNext on monthly test and patch distribution cycles by reducing its patch frequency to quarterly. The PCI auditing requirement can be met through change control software, claimed Chauhan.
Other challenging areas, as McCullen affirmed, includes data encryption and user-based access controls.
Questions?
For more information and advice on this topic you can quickly contact a Restaurant POS professional serving your area.
The author of this article is the Vice President of Customer Relations at www.POS-For-Restaurants.com with over 20 years experience in the restaurant point of sale industry.