advertisement
advertisement

This is page 2 of:

Point-To-Point Encryption Guidance Arrives: Device Testing and Possible Surprises For Early Adopters

September 14th, 2011

Once a PTS lab approves a P2PE device, the merchant should have some level of assurance that its device can (I did not say “will”) protect cardholder data. The QSA’s role is to determine whether the device is properly configured so that the merchant cannot access any PAN or magstripe data.

P2PE vendors and manufacturers will submit their devices to a PTS lab just like they do their PIN pads today. The PCI Council will (presumably) list all approved devices, and merchants can check that list before they sign on the dotted line. The issue for early adopters is, what do they do if their devices are not on the approved list?

From this QSA’s perspective, about the only thing merchants can do today is to check their contract to see if there is any provision that covers this eventuality. For example, if the vendor has other devices that are approved, can the merchant trade in its unapproved devices and get some discount? Similarly, if a merchant’s device appears in a Visa security bulletin, is there some price break (say, based on age of device) on replacements? Unfortunately, if the vendor has no approved device options, the merchant could be out of luck.

Merchants may want to recognize this situation and include some provision in their vendor agreements. My guess is that most experienced vendors’ P2PE devices will pass the Council’s testing regime. The terminal manufacturers are smart people, many make PTS-approved devices already, and everybody has to have anticipated something like this. But just in case, merchants may want to consider a provision in their contract or service-level agreement should their vendor’s promise to reduce PCI scope not be realized.

It also is interesting to note the Council’s expected testing and approval regime will apply to almost any POS device that reads and encrypts cardholder data. That means this Secure Card Reader designation will cover peripherals attached to a mobile device that encrypt the data and then pass only that encrypted data to the mobile smart device for transmission and processing. My guess is that including these peripheral devices in the Secure Card Reader class may be what the Council referred to in its Mobile Payments announcement this past June.

Like merchants, vendors and QSAs everywhere, I am anxiously awaiting details from the PCI Council on P2PE implementation guidelines. It has been two years since the Council’s first study identifying P2PE as a promising technology for reducing PCI scope and speeding compliance.

What do you think? Have you implemented P2PE? Are you looking at it? I’d like to hear your thoughts. Either leave a comment or E-mail me at wconway@403labs.com.


advertisement

One Comment | Read Point-To-Point Encryption Guidance Arrives: Device Testing and Possible Surprises For Early Adopters

  1. ed Says:

    What is being described in the article appears to be the implementation of a Trust Service Management (TSM) entity meant for peer-to-peer mobile payments, not retailers. But maybe I’m wrong.

Newsletters

StorefrontBacktalk delivers the latest retail technology news & analysis. Join more than 60,000 retail IT leaders who subscribe to our free weekly email. Sign up today!
advertisement

Most Recent Comments

Why Did Gonzales Hackers Like European Cards So Much Better?

I am still unclear about the core point here-- why higher value of European cards. Supply and demand, yes, makes sense. But the fact that the cards were chip and pin (EMV) should make them less valuable because that demonstrably reduces the ability to use them fraudulently. Did the author mean that the chip and pin cards could be used in a country where EMV is not implemented--the US--and this mis-match make it easier to us them since the issuing banks may not have as robust anti-fraud controls as non-EMV banks because they assumed EMV would do the fraud prevention for them Read more...
Two possible reasons that I can think of and have seen in the past - 1) Cards issued by European banks when used online cross border don't usually support AVS checks. So, when a European card is used with a billing address that's in the US, an ecom merchant wouldn't necessarily know that the shipping zip code doesn't match the billing code. 2) Also, in offline chip countries the card determines whether or not a transaction is approved, not the issuer. In my experience, European issuers haven't developed the same checks on authorization requests as US issuers. So, these cards might be more valuable because they are more likely to get approved. Read more...
A smart card slot in terminals doesn't mean there is a reader or that the reader is activated. Then, activated reader or not, the U.S. processors don't have apps certified or ready to load into those terminals to accept and process smart card transactions just yet. Don't get your card(t) before the terminal (horse). Read more...
The marketplace does speak. More fraud capacity translates to higher value for the stolen data. Because nearly 100% of all US transactions are authorized online in real time, we have less fraud regardless of whether the card is Magstripe only or chip and PIn. Hence, $10 prices for US cards vs $25 for the European counterparts. Read more...
@David True. The European cards have both an EMV chip AND a mag stripe. Europeans may generally use the chip for their transactions, but the insecure stripe remains vulnerable to skimming, whether it be from a false front on an ATM or a dishonest waiter with a handheld skimmer. If their stripe is skimmed, the track data can still be cloned and used fraudulently in the United States. If European banks only detect fraud from 9-5 GMT, that might explain why American criminals prefer them over American bank issued cards, who have fraud detection in place 24x7. Read more...

StorefrontBacktalk
Our apologies. Due to legal and security copyright issues, we can't facilitate the printing of Premium Content. If you absolutely need a hard copy, please contact customer service.