WASHINGTON – With more data breaches happening at retailers both big and small, it’s more important than ever to work on finding better ways to handle financial transactions securely. To that end, NACS is joining with more than a dozen trade associations on a new cybersecurity partnership, which will focus on exploring paths to increased information sharing, better card security technology and maintaining the trust of customers.

Other organizations participating are the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA), Financial Services Roundtable (FSR), American Bankers Association (ABA), American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA), The Clearing House (TCH), Consumer Bankers Association (CBA), Food Marketing Institute (FMI), Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), Independent Community Bankers of America (ICBA), International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC), National Restaurant Association (NRA) and National Retail Federation (NRF).

“Everyone, from the smallest to the largest businesses, has an interest in keeping our customers’ payment data secure,” said Henry Armour, president and CEO of NACS. “Working collaboratively across industries to find ways to thwart data thieves is the best approach to protecting customers’ information.”

Payments occur in an ecosystem of retailers, banks, card companies, processors, security and technology vendors and others. The ecosystem operates best when cyber threats are addressed collaboratively and each stakeholder does all it can to reasonably ensure the defenses of their internal systems are as robust and resilient as possible. The partnership will encourage collaboration across the industries, focusing on the following principles:

• Information sharing is paramount to warding off cyber attacks and protecting data. We are stronger together than divided and must warn each other about cyber threats being waged against all our defenses. The financial services industry has a robust information-sharing mechanism through the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) that could serve as a forum or model for further information sharing across sectors.
• Other innovative technologies must be implemented, such as systems that will transmit payment data in a way that is unique and dynamic to reduce the risks. Ongoing innovation will be needed to outpace the threats.
• We must forge partnerships among all stakeholders of the payments ecosystem to collaborate on long-term, comprehensive solutions to the threats that are growing to card-not-present situations and the mobile environment.

The participating trade associations will collaborate in working to focus on increasing threat information sharing, innovative technologies that add safeguards to protect consumers within the payment system and other areas like national data breach laws.