Commentary from Mr.Geoff Webb, Senior Director, Solution Strategy at NetIQ about Apple Pay (a way to take credit cards out of the mix and pay using your phone) and the security implications of this with the launch of iPhone 6.
Commentary by Geoff Webb:
Clearly makes a lot of sense for Apple – as it further centralises the iPhone in our day to day activity. For users it provides a nice bump in convenience, but I’m not sure it necessarily improves security yet. Security tends to be a little like an air-filled balloon – and when you squeeze one end the air, or in this case, the risk, moves elsewhere.
Taking the clerk out of the transaction closes one gap “but if there’s anything we’ve learned it’s that introducing new technology generally shifts the attack somewhere else”.
There’s a lot of moving parts in the online payment industry, and while this kind of technology would potentially make it difficult to replicate the kind of attacks we saw at Target (and now Home Depot) it doesn’t mean that attackers are going to be unable to find some other point of weakness.
It’s a good thing – but the end of credit card fraud? Unlikely.
About NetIQ
NetIQ (part of The Attachmate Group) is a global, enterprise software company with a relentless focus on customer success. Our portfolio includes scalable, automated solutions for Identity, Security, Access, Governance, Systems and Application,Service, and Workload Management that help organizations securely deliver, measure and manage computing services across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.
