Risk on Radio

This morning I joined a talk show on RTHK and discussed risk of usnig credit cards. Media attendtion is high after the recent security breach at Cardsystems. The story was uncovered on 17 June 2005, but after 6 days it is still lingering on. WHY?

First, I believe this incident is huge in terms of people affected. 40 million card numbers were lost. Secondly, it was uncovered on SAT. I am not joking. One of my lectures in a Crisis Management class told his student in class that when reporters are hungry for news, even lost of a penny can be headline news. On Saturday, when reporters unable to find new story, a incident like this one will be reported by every newspaper.

Back to the talk show, there were few people called in. And one mentioned that when he visited a Indian online shop and was diverted to a HSBC credit card website. This website asked him to enter his personal information like birthday and passport number. He worried this may be fraudulent website and asked for advice.

As a banking guy, I know the credit card website is part of the process called "Verified by VISA" and definitely not fraudulent. This “Verified by VISA” process enables the card issuing bank to authenticate the online transactions. Banks invested a lot to enable this technology. However, the general public is scared about things tooooooo new.

If you think positively, this person is risk aversive and phishng is not going to catch him.
If you think negative, it is a lost/lost/lost situation. The credit card holder cannot buy his goods. The online cannot sell. The bank’s investment on new technology is gone.

I am on the negative side.

Click here to Hong Kong Backchat talk show.

Comments

Antony said…
VISA Asia has advocating credit industry to pay more attention on IT security. Account Information Security Standard is their recent effort

http://www.visa-asia.com/secured/downloads.shtml
28/6/05 20:28
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