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According to the Trustwave Holdings Inc. annual 2017 Security Pressures Report, the task of securing organizations has become even more complex as internal and external forces exert pressure to close cybersecurity vulnerability gaps. For the report, 1,600 full-time IT professionals were surveyed from enterprises averaging 4,267 employees based in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Singapore and Japan. "Attacks have become more targeted," said Chris Schueler, Senior Vice President of Managed Security Services at Trustwave. "We've seen in the past 12 months, with a lot of the cases we work and clients we secure that the attacks are very targeted to the corporation. They know the people that may be opening up email, not just broadcasting email, and they follow up with a phone call to that same individual to encourage them to open the email."
Apple appears to have the lead in mobile contactless payments, for now. But the race for tap-and-go payment dominance has only just begun, and as a bevy of recent reports suggest this may be a long race. New data from Juniper Research Ltd., a U.K.-based financial technology market research firm, shows consumers using the Apple Pay mobile app now top 86 million, in a show of dominance over other leading contactless apps, including Samsung Pay and Android Pay. Juniper expects that by the end of this year, the total of OEM contactless payment app users will surpass 150 million worldwide.
Recent events at iPayment Inc. reflect a fresh start for the payment processing brand, which was established in 1999. In addition to closing a comprehensive refinancing package April 11, 2017, senior management introduced a series of initiatives designed to reinvigorate the Westlake Village, Calif.-based company following recent setbacks. As they prepare for the upcoming partner conference in May 2017, employees and partners say they are looking ahead to a bright future. "For the past four years, iPayment has dealt with too much debt, internal turmoil and external news as former managers were indicted for securities fraud," said O.B. Rawls IV, Chief Executive Officer and President of iPayment. "With that history behind us, we're looking forward again, with a strong management team, decreased debt and a leverage ratio on par with other Super ISOs."
Wells Fargo & Co. debit and credit cardholders will soon be able to use PayPal to make purchases with Android phones at the POS. Participating merchants' payment terminals must be enabled to accept near field communication payments. The potential reach is wide; currently, millions of merchants can accept payments via PayPal. "We're looking to enable payments for our customers' mobile-driven lives, and this upcoming capability allows us to further engage the millions of Wells Fargo customers who use their debit and credit cards on PayPal to seamlessly make mobile and online, and now in-store, purchases," said Jim Smith, Executive Vice President and Head, Virtual Channels at Wells Fargo.
A year after launching the Messenger Platform, Facebook unveiled version 2.0 at the mid-April F8 Facebook Developer Conference held in San Jose, Calif. One notable difference at this year's conference was heightened activity within the financial community to integrate Messenger customer engagement and commerce initiatives. Over 1.2 billion people globally use the Messenger app each month, according to Facebook.When the instant messaging and chat platform initially rolled out, developers gained access to Facebook's Wit.ai Bot Engine, which converts natural language into structured data for automating conversations using artificial intelligence (AI). The bot engine apparently becomes more intelligent with each interaction. For businesses, the service provides automated response tools to more efficiently interact with customers.
A new study by Experian Information Solutions Inc. found a 33 percent increase in ecommerce fraud in 2016, compared with the previous year. The findings were consistent with Experian's forecasts and not surprising to security analysts. Analyzing millions of ecommerce transactions, researchers concluded certain geographical regions were hot spots for cybercriminals. Miami, Houston, and South El Monte, Calif., earned the dubious distinction of being top-ranked cities for fraud. The states with the highest concentration of billing and shipping fraud were Delaware, Oregon and Florida, company representatives stated. They also attributed a record number of data breaches in 2016 to vulnerabilities in security infrastructures.
What's old is new again, even in payments. A pair of indictments handed down in April by the Brooklyn District Attorney, in New York City, shows fraudsters are still attracted to check scams. The two indictments alleged that fraud involving money order transactions totaling close to a half million dollars took place over the course of several years.
The alleged fraudsters, nine in all, are accused of taking advantage of recent innovations, like mobile check deposit, and availability schedules that can, at times, provide customers with access to funds from deposits before deposited items are deemed fraudulent. 
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