The majority of merchants are still at risk of cyberattacks, according to a new report by Verizon Communications. Four out of five global retailers and other merchants failed when tested for compliance with payment card data security standards.
The report acknowledged that the tested standards are only an industry-wide minimal acceptable baseline, and adhering to them can still fail to stop attackers. However, Verizon found that each company studied that had been breached in the last 10 years was not compliant at the time of the breach.
The report assessed more than 5,000 merchants in 30 countries to find that only 20 per cent of the retailers, financial institutions, hospitality firms and other companies surveyed were fully compliant less than a year after installing the required security safeguards.
Most companies are not vigilant enough in maintaining security to remain compliant with PCI DDS, and only run upgrades of security software when an annual compliance check approaches, Verizon said.
Overall compliance went up by 18 percentage points for 11 out of the 12 payment data security standards from 2013-2014, Reuters reported.
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