From a branding standpoint, franchisors have a lot to lose if one of their franchisees falls victim to a breach.  Depending on the level of media attention the breach garners, one for a store in downtown Philadelphia has the potential to negatively affect the brand – and, arguably, sales— across the state, regionally or even nationally.

The marketplace has expressed a growing interest in pursuing data field encryption (also known as end-to-end encryption) of card data. Data field encryption protects card information from the swipe to the acquirer processor with no need for the merchant to process or transmit card data in the “clear.” Importantly, data field encryption renders cardholder data useless to criminals in the event of a merchant data breach.

During a vulnerability assessment an environment is assessed to determine if known vulnerabilities can be identified. Penetration testing goes a step further by attempting to exploit these identified vulnerabilities.