Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Cloud Security Alliances Identifies Top Seven Threats to Cloud Computing

The threats are listed below.  To read the full report, underwritten by HP, click here.







Threat #1: Abuse and Nefarious Use of Cloud Computing .........................................................

Threat #2: Insecure Interfaces and APIs .................................................................................

Threat #3: Malicious Insiders..................................................................................................

Threat #4: Shared Technology Issues .....................................................................................

Threat #5: Data Loss or Leakage ............................................................................................

Threat #6: Account or Service Hijacking...................................................................................

Threat #7: Unknown Risk Profile .............................................................................................

 





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Online Banking Is Convenient For Everyone, Including Hackers

Security for online banking suffers in the face of perceived convenience.  The reality is that the very same convenience can morph into a personal nightmare if your online banking credentials are compromised.  What's so "supposedly" inconvenient about swiping a card and entering a PIN anyway?  I don't suspect they will be changing the ATM system over to a "username" "password" format anytime soon.



Here's a blurb from MyBankTracker.com talking about how convenience (over security) can lead to your financial demise...





Perpetual innovations in online banking are a reason for the rampant increase in the number of customers logging into their bank accounts through their personal computers and mobile devices rather than walking into a local branch.





Although the ease of access is a convenience for banking customers, such a privilege may be extended to sinister individuals looking to steal personal and financial information. Hackers and malicious software are ubiquitous throughout the web and falling victim to them could lead to your financial demise.


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TxVia Introduces Solutions to Enable Third-Party Processors for Prepaid Cards

Image representing TxVia as depicted in CrunchBase
Provides Clients with Capabilities to Customize and Offer End-to-End Prepaid Card Processing


NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--TxVia, Inc., a pioneer in processing technology for network-based payment systems, today announced it has introduced solutions to enable third parties to become processors for prepaid cards, removing past barriers to entry.



There have historically been significant hurdles to entering the prepaid card processing business, including the cost, time and risk associated with creating processing platforms. Typically built in-house from the ground up or based on licensed software, platforms have required tremendous development to meet even the most basic needs of prepaid. TxVia eliminates these impediments by offering processors a secure online environment, complete with the application development, data storage and other tools essential to developing and running multi-tenanted, massively scalable end-to-end prepaid card processing systems.



“A wide range of organizations has the opportunity to enter the prepaid card processing market and offer integrated, highly differentiated processing to their customers, serving as preferred options when compared with today’s providers,” said Anil D. Aggarwal, chairman and CEO of TxVia. “These entities include established payments and transaction processing companies that already supply credit, debit, payroll, bill payment, core banking and other processing services as well as business process outsourcing and managed services functions.



“They can leverage their brand strength, complementary products and services, and global reach to provide prepaid card processing to their existing client portfolios of financial institutions, corporations, retailers and others and, in the process, help them drive growth and hedge against softness in other business lines,” he added. “While an array of third party processors provide first-generation processing services to prepaid card issuers and program managers today, we believe that a number of them as well as other organizations are well positioned to provide the next generation of prepaid processing solutions.



“With our unique platform-as-a-service (PaaS) delivery model, we have made developing and managing robust proprietary prepaid processing platforms readily achievable, allowing organizations to leverage existing assets to create highly competitive offerings. Utilizing PaaS, we provide our clients with an integrated development environment called TxDev—a ‘platform builder’—that allows them to quickly and cost-effectively deploy processing systems entirely in-house and fully tailor them to their specific needs, ensuring unique capabilities and protection of their intellectual property.”



TxVia’s clients can create any number of customized, interoperable platforms to meet the needs of their customers across the full range of prepaid card products, avoiding the pitfalls of one-size-fits-all approaches typically in market today. Starting with a robust template library and host of optional third-party switch services, clients can define every aspect of their processing platforms—from functionality and release timing to infrastructure and service levels—allowing them to deliver to the highest levels of quality their customers expect, while operating cost effectively.



TxVia clients also can participate in the TxVia Payment Processing Developer Network, allowing them to optionally commercialize the unique capabilities they develop to third parties as well as utilize those offered by others.



The network branded prepaid card industry has gained significant traction over the past decade and is projected to continue to grow rapidly over the coming years. According to a 2009 report, Prepaid Market Forecast 2009 to 2012, Mercator Advisory Group predicts total U.S. load volume of $292 billion onto network branded prepaid cards in 2012, up 383 percent from $60.4 billion in 2008. Industry consensus is that the long-term domestic potential is in excess of $1 trillion and with the current state of the economy and near-term outlook for mainstream and nontraditional financial services, the opportunity for prepaid remains strong.



“The time has never been better to enter the prepaid card processing business,” said Aggarwal. “Building on the vertical integration we’ve enabled large-scale program managers to achieve with processing, we’re excited to be the first to enable third parties to quickly and cost effectively become end-to-end third-party prepaid card processors, whether they’re upgrading their current systems or entering prepaid for the first time.”



About TxVia, Inc.




TxVia offers the most advanced processing technology for network-based payment systems. Our solutions encompass fully integrated, end-to-end issuing, acquiring and network processing for a range of payment products including prepaid, debit, credit and hybrids. TxVia's solutions have been deployed extensively in prepaid, where the complexity of the product line and diversity of the value chains require highly customized processing platforms. As the only mass provider of custom solutions, we're modernizing electronic payments by offering unparalleled product and service quality, product manageability and configurability, platform performance and operations, client control, and cost savings. Our clients, which include some of the largest payments companies, realize significant scalability, reliability, time-to-market, economic, security and other benefits, overcoming the risks and product and service degradation often associated with other processing options.



We pioneered the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) delivery model for network-based payments as an outgrowth of software-as-a-service (SaaS). With PaaS we rapidly and cost-effectively create highly customized and fully segregated processing platforms for our clients. This approach best manages the ever-increasing complexities of payments across the various products, verticals, organizations, geographies and channels that encompass the industry. With our PaaS delivery model, clients can outsource processing to TxVia completely or bring all or a part of their requirements in-house, allowing them meaningful control over their processing--from functionality and release timing to infrastructure and service levels. Regardless of the configuration, PaaS users do not share a platform with other organizations and products, and are able to redefine the payments value chain to their specific needs.





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Ritz Interactive Implements PaySecure across its Network of E-Commerce Sites

Ritz Camera & ImageImage via Wikipedia
Top 150 Internet Merchant Brings Simple Internet PIN Debit Payment Option to Online Shoppers




ATLANTA--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Acculynk and Ritz Interactive announced today that PaySecure is now available across 16 of the company’s E-commerce websites, including flagship sites RitzCamera.com, WolfCamera.com, and BoatersWorld.com. With PaySecure, Ritz Interactive’s customers can enjoy the convenience and security of Internet PIN debit in a simple payment experience that requires nothing more than their current debit card and PIN.



Each Ritz Interactive site, branded and marketed individually, is dedicated to bringing unique products to online shoppers in popular verticals including digital cameras and photography, as well as marine, boating, and fishing gear.



“Ritz Interactive offers shoppers a wide variety of merchandise at some of the lowest prices on the Internet,” said Fred Lerner, President and CEO. “We are dedicated to providing our customers choice in a convenient, simple shopping experience, and PaySecure fits well with our overall value proposition.”



Consumers who use PaySecure for their debit card purchase simply enter their PIN on PaySecure’s patented, graphical PIN-pad, and the transaction is processed as PIN debit, leveraging Ritz Interactive’s existing infrastructure and processing relationship with Merchant e-Solutions, a leading global provider of payment processing solutions.



“With the addition of Ritz Interactive’s network of E-commerce websites to our growing merchant portfolio, consumers now have even more options of where they use PaySecure,” said Ashish Bahl, CEO of Acculynk. “Ritz Interactive is one of the premier photography and outdoor companies on the Internet, and we are very pleased that they have chosen to expand their payment options with PaySecure.”



Consumers can use PaySecure at a variety of online merchants, including AirTran, Jelly Belly, 2Checkout and ShoppersChoice. In January, Acculynk announced that Spirit Airlines will also add PaySecure to its online payment options in 2010.



“PaySecure has received enormous interest from the airline industry and Top 500 Internet merchants, and we expect to make many more partnership announcements over the next few months,” said Bahl.



“Merchants want to provide their consumers a positive shopping experience and a big part of that is ensuring they can pay the way they want,” added Jim Aviles, Merchant e-Solutions COO. “PaySecure meets consumer demands while bringing our merchants significant benefits from reduced costs, fraud and charge-backs.”

About Acculynk


Acculynk secures online transactions with a suite of software-only services that are backed by a powerful encryption and authentication framework protected by a family of issued and pending patents. Acculynk’s services provide greater security, reliability, convenience and return on investment for consumers, merchants, networks, issuers and acquirers. For more information, visit http://www.acculynk.com.



About Ritz Interactive, Inc.

Ritz Interactive is an award-winning, specialty online retailer and e-commerce service provider that operates a network of websites offering high quality, branded lifestyle products. Since its inception in Irvine, California in 1999, the company has become a leader in providing a full selection of photographic and consumer electronics products as well as a wide range of marine, boating and fishing products, at competitive prices for online shoppers. Ritz Interactive’s leading photo-specialty and consumer electronics e-commerce websites are RitzCamera.com and WolfCamera.com, while the company’s leading marine e-commerce website is BoatersWorld.com. Each of the individually branded and marketed websites offers a broad and deep selection of competitively priced products, how-to tips and articles, and customer product reviews.



See http://www.ritzinteractive.com/ for more information.



Contacts

Acculynk

Danielle Duclos, 678-894-7013

Director of Marketing

or

Ritz Interactive

Andre Brysha, 949-442-0205

SVP & Chief Marketing Officer





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