The Green Sheet Online Edition
January 1, 2022 • 22:01:02
Improve your security posture with cloud cryptography
Futurex, a data security solutions provider, enhanced VirtuCrypt, its cloud cryptography and key management solution designed to facilitate PCI compliant and FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validated cloud HSMs across transaction acquiring, card issuance and point-to-point encryption (P2PE), the company stated.
Ryan Smith, vice president of global business development at Futurex, said VirtuCrypt builds on a heritage of innovation. "We have been working with the financial services industry for more than 40 years," he said. "We're proud to announce a range of groundbreaking enhancements to our VirtuCrypt financial cloud HSM, delivering on our commitment to meeting the security and compliance needs of financial services organizations worldwide."
Smith described VirtuCrypt as "everything you'd expect in a cloud service," with scalability, disaster recovery and failover, and the ability to spin up or spin down HSMs on demand. The service is backed by 24/7/365 support and used by ISOs, financial institutions, retailers and payment service providers, he added.
Compliant, versatile cryptography
Smith further noted that VirtuCrypt, a true cloud payment hardware security solution, is designed, developed and manufactured by Futurex. "It's easy to take out a contract for space in a commodity data center and throw some HSMs in a rack … but that's not a cloud HSM service; that's co-location with some fancy marketing wrapped around it," he said, citing the following ways in which VirtuCrypt complements Futurex partner IT ecosystems:
- Cloud enablement: Historically, lack of compliant, scalable, versatile cloud HSMs has been a major impediment to cloud migrations. VirtuCrypt has removed these barriers, enabling ISOs and other service providers to migrate entire infrastructures to the cloud.
- Hybrid models: For organizations that prefer to maintain on-premises HSMs, VirtuCrypt hybrid solutions can seamlessly interface physical and cloud payment HSMs, providing flexibility and scalability in how these companies protect their most sensitive data.
- Native integrations: For additional flexibility, VirtuCrypt supports native integrations with payment applications running inside public cloud providers such as AWS, Azure and GCP. Within these PCI DSS- PCI PIN- and PCI P2PE-reviewed infrastructures, cryptographic processing and key management functions are powered by Futurex's FIPS 140-2 Level 3 and PCI HSM validated cryptographic modules.
- Agile, redundant systems: Rapid deployments, which provide the ability to spin up and spin down cloud HSMs on demand, are fully redundant with data centers based in every major region of the world, providing SLA-backed uptime of up to 99.999 percent.
- Broad compatibility: Futurex, a registered Encryption Services Organization (ESO), services all major processors and issuers and provides database encryption, file encryption and integration to all types of organizations and remote POS key loading to numerous device manufacturers.
Channel partner benefits
Financial services organizations depend on HSMs for secure, compliant transaction acquiring, card and mobile issuing, and P2PE, Smith stated. HSMs are used for PIN translation and verification, CVV generation and validation, EMV validation, message authentication code generation and verification, key management, and mobile payment processing. In addition, banks, ISOs and PSPs use HSMs to issue payment cards and provision mobile payment tokens, he added. When retailers use terminals supporting remote key loading, it eliminates the need for the terminals to be shipped out to an ESO for re-keying, whenever those activities are required. Offering this service is a huge value-add, Smith stated.
When payment processors use cloud infrastructure (including cloud HSMs), they can focus on core business instead of managing IT infrastructure, Smith said. This lowers risk of outages, streamlines operations, reduces costs, especially CAPEX and OPEX, and these benefits can be passed down to ISOs and their customers, he added.
"VirtuCrypt services have five data centers worldwide and certifications include PCI DSS, PCI PIN, PCI P2PE, and TR-39," Smith said, noting that the service as a platform-agnostic way to deploy cryptographic services across a range of financial use cases and architectures. 
Website: www.futurex.com Contact: info@futurex.com
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