Where is your POS system vulnerable?

When it comes to point-of-sale, there are a few vulnerabilities that you probably didn’t even know were there. In 2012, the retail industry made up 45 percent of data breach investigations, making it the highest percentage in retail history. E-Commerce sites were the most common target, accounting for 48 percent of all investigations and spanning 29 different countries. Of these attacked businesses, it took 64 percent of them more than 90 days to detect an intrusion.

Small businesses are particularly vulnerable to hacking. Sixty-three percent of 2010 cyber attacks were at companies with 100 employees or fewer and 95 percent of credit card breaches were on small business customers.

Why are smaller businesses at a higher risk? Hackers can break into dozens of small businesses in the same amount of time it would take to hack one large business.

There are many different methods of hacking. Credit card hacks are one of the most common attacks on small businesses. Employee theft is another problem in any business. Data crime rings pay employees for data and financially motivated attacks typically rely on planted computer code such as KeyLlama, a kind of keystroke logging hardware.

Internal theft has such an impact that 60 percent of all business failures are a direct result of internal theft. In this infographic, MerchantWarehouse looks at the alarmingly unknown methods that hackers use to exploit businesses, as well as offering up some ways that a company can secure their data.

Brought to you by Merchant Warehouse