This is the second installment of a three-part series on banking industry trends.
Information security is a hot button for all businesses. But for banks, it is particularly critical due to the nature of the information they have as well as increasing compliance regulations. As part of our ongoing series on the US banking industry, we are taking an in-depth look at the security profile of banks in America and what they are doing to protect personal information.
With Black Friday and Cyber Monday under our belts, it’s officially peak shopping season for millions of American consumers. Retailers will be working overtime to meet demand and earn much-needed revenue—but if they’re not careful, each credit card transaction they handle could expose both their customers and their business to risk.
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is designed to protect consumers and increase trust in retailers. Without these measures, it would be all too simple for a hacker to break into a retailer’s systems and steal consumers’ payment card numbers.
When we heard that Microsoft used its B2B Worldwide Partner Conference to show off phones, an iPad-like slate, and motion sensors for the Xbox video game system, it confirmed one of our latest theories and one of our customers’ biggest challenges: Consumerization has hit the corporate mainstream.
Jason Hiner, editor of TechRepublic, calls the consumerization of IT one of the industry’s key trends. When the topic first arose, “It was primarily an annoyance involving a few power users who were bringing their own Palm Treos into the enterprise and using some unauthorized Web tools to get their work done.”
But these days, corporate IT must deal with personal laptops and smartphones and a mobile workforce. The buzz around unified communications, and the growth in popularity of Web-based tools such as Evernote, Skype and Google Docs, raise questions about where your enterprise data lives and who can access it.
