Heartland Payment Systems, the victim last year of a massive data breach of sensitive card data, vowed after that devastating event to develop new security gear based on end-to-end encryption between itself and its merchants to prevent such a breach from occurring again. That's now taking shape, but slowly.
"We have a long way to go," acknowledges Heartland CEO Bob Carr, pointing out the so-called E3 payment terminals, intended for small-to-midsize customers, are but the first step, "with more advanced technologies coming in the summer" intended for use between Heartland's network and much larger merchants that would require more back-end integration into processing systems. "We're not ready to help all of them yet," he acknowledges.

The six greatest threats to U.S. cybersecurityThere is as of yet no end-to-end encryption requirement for debit- and credit-card processing, though the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council, which sets technical standards used by payment processors and merchants, is expected to weigh in on that topic in its upcoming PCI standard this October.

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