Las Vegas (September 6 , 2007) A leading expert on terrorism and financial crime says protecting credit card data is critical to eliminating a major source of funding for terrorist organizations. According to Dennis Lormel, a former FBI Section Chief for financial crimes, credit card fraud is a low-risk, high-reward way for terrorists to get the money they need to operate. Further, since terrorists have become adept at hacking into computer systems to steal card data, technology that removes credit card data from computer systems effectively chokes off this revenue stream.
Lormel, who is now Senior Vice President of the consulting firm Corporate Risk International, cites the case of Imam Samudra, who was convicted of masterminding the Bali bombing in Indonesia. “After he was arrested, he wrote a jailhouse manifesto that urged fellow terrorists to hack into computer systems and steal credit card data. He called it the ‘cash cow’ for radical organizations,” Lormel said
Once the card data is stolen, terrorists then use it to generate cash or to directly purchase items such as weapons, bomb-making materials and night-vision goggles. “They are very adept at exploiting weaknesses in the financial system, such as vulnerable credit card data in computers,” Lormel explained.
Shift4 Corporation, a leading provider of enterprise payment solutions, has developed payment processing technology that combats credit card theft by removing all useable card data at the merchant level so it can never be stolen and used by terrorist organizations. “Getting the data out of the reach of terrorist hackers absolutely chokes off a major source of funds for these organizations,” said Lormel.
Shift4 Corporation’s DOLLARS ON THE NET® payment processing system and 4Go SafeSwipe® use “Tokenization” technology to remove all usable card data from the entire transaction process. Instead of storing actual credit card numbers, the data is converted to a token: a globally unique, randomized representation of the card number. Only the token is stored in the system. Tokenization is superior to simple encryption because sensitive personal card data is never stored in the system and is thus never available to hackers or dishonest employees.
Lormel will be a featured speaker at the 2007 Real Security Summit, September 26-27, at the Rio Hotel Casino in Las Vegas. The event, sponsored by Shift4 Corporation, has a limited number of reservations still available. Visit www.shift4.com for registration information.