Visa Asia Pacific Security Summit 2015

Visa has hosted security summits in the APAC region for 11 years now, and while much has changed, some topics remain as relevant as ever.

Even though the fundamental discussion of keeping credit card transactions safe has not changed, the emergence of new technologies has pushed the talking points to an entirely different dimension compared to the 11 years prior.

From mobile devices to bitcoins, new technologies are being developed at an alarming rate. Because of the speed of development, security experts are concerned that security risks are, at best, a secondary concern to developers keen on getting their product released.

Mahesh Aditya, the Chief Enterprise Risk Officer for Visa, likened the way new technologies affected the online world’s ecosystem to a “ripple effect”.

Poorly-secured new technologies lead to data breaches, which leads to fraud mitigation counter-methods being developed, which leads to eventual government engagement to help solve the problem.

“Before new technologies are adopted, we have to make sure they are safe,” Aditya stressed.

To combat a new wave of security threats, Visa showcased their own new line of data security measures, whose aim is also to raise consumer trust in credit card transaction security.

One new security feature was their latest fraud detection system, capable of performing 6,000 fraud checks a second, and requiring just a third of a second to determine if a transaction is fraudulent.

In a dramatic re-enactment using mousetraps and a man’s fingers as sacrifice, Visa showed how they use a sequence of checks to ensure that suspicious transactions are declined faster than a criminal can get his hopes up.

Visa also showed some impressive statistics to show that their methods are working. Phishing against Visa brands has been down 50% in the last 18 months, and 88% of malicious sites spoofing Visa domains have been blocked.

Ground Labs was present at the summit, showcasing our own cardholder data discovery solutions.

Events like the Visa Security Summit have always been a great place for us to touch base with current customers as well as meet new faces.

We saw quite a bit of interest from Japanese QSAs, who seem keen to use our products to help them find cardholder data during security audits they conduct for their clients.

Visa APAC Security Summit 2016 can’t come soon enough!