Heartland Payment Systems: lessons learned from a data breach

On August 13, 2009, the Payment Cards Center hosted a workshop examining the changing nature of data security in consumer electronic payments. The center invited the chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems (HPS or Heartland), Robert (Bob) Carr, to lead this discussion and to share his experiences stemming from the data breach at his company in late 2008 and, as important, to discuss lessons learned as a result of this event. The former director of the Payment Cards Center, Peter Burns, who is acting as a senior payments advisor to HPS, also joined the discussion to outline Heartland's post-breach efforts aimed at improving information sharing and data security within the consumer payments industry. In conclusion, Carr introduced several technology solutions that are under discussion in payment security circles as ways to better secure payment card data as they move among the different parties in the card payment systems: end-to-end encryption, tokenization, and chip technology. While HPS has been very supportive of end-to-end encryption, each of these alternatives offers its own set of advantages and disadvantages.Payment systems ; Data protection ; Electronic commerce

How to pay in LicenseScript

Current DRM systems do not provide flexible payment methods, requiring the user to handle the payment by hand. For instance, when the user needs to pay for watching a movie, she needs to decide which available payment method is the most optimal and suitable. This is a rather cumbersome process for the user that can be avoided by the specification of payment policies. A payment policy automates the payment process of each content usage, choosing the best alternative among the possible payment methods. We show how LicenseScript is able to model payment policies, allowing the user to precisely specify how a payment of content usage should be performed

Effets sur la santé de la recroissance bactérienne dans les eaux de consommation / Health significance of bacterial regrowth in drinking water [Tribune libre, texte anglais et français]

La présence de bactéries hétérotrophes dans les eaux de consommation (robinet filtrée sur unités domestiques ou embouteillées) constitue un problème difficile à résoudre car on connaît très mal leurs effets sur la santé humaine. Deux points de vue s'affrontent: l'une perçoit ces bactéries comme des bactéries sans aucune importance quel que soit leur nombre, l'autre suppose que certaines d'entre elles sont potentiellement pathogènes et que l'on ne doit pas leur permettre de se multiplier indûment dans l'eau de consommation.Ces bactéries hétérotrophes sont présentes partout et elles trouvent dans l'eau de consommation une niche écologique qui permet parfois leur croissance en grand nombre (e.g., nodules du réseau, tuyauterie des maisons, chauffe-eau, eaux embouteillées, filtre à charbon actif, etc.). Elles ne sont généralement pas d'origine fécale et ne peuvent donc pas servir d'indicateur de pollution fécale. De plus, les indicateurs fécaux tels les coliformes ou Escherichia coli ne peuvent servir à décrire ce groupe de bactéries. Des études réalisées aux États-Unis chez des familles consommant de l'eau filtrée sur filtres à usage domestiques n'ont pas mis en évidence d'effet sur la santé de concentrations élevées de bactéries hétérotrophes. D'autres études ont suggéré qu'une forte croissance de ces bactéries pouvait même être inhibitrice de la croissance des coliformes fécaux et de certaines bactéries pathogènes. Enfin, on a mis en évidence dans certains cas un effet inhibiteur de la présence de grand nombre de ces bactéries lors de l'énumération des bactéries indicatrices par filtration sur membrane. Au contraire, des études canadiennes récentes suggèrent que la présence de bactéries hétérotrophes en grand nombre pourrait avoir des effets sur la santé des consommateurs d'eau. Ces effets ont été observés lors de la prolifération de la flore bactérienne hétérotrophe dans les réservoirs d'unités de filtration par osmose-inversée. Enfin, des bactéries possédant des facteurs de virulence, et pouvant donc initier des maladies, ont été identifiées dans les eaux de consommation et posent le problème sous un angle nouveau.Les indicateurs dont nous disposons pour évaluer les effets sur la santé des eaux de consommation sont de plus en plus remis en question. Les indicateurs de pollution fécale étant inadéquats pour l'évaluation des risques sur la santé il faudra maintenant nous tourner vers d'autres méthodes pour la surveillance des risques associés à la consommation d'eau. n est très difficile avec les informations dont nous disposons maintenant, de définir si l'on doit réglementer le nombre de bactéries hétérotrophes ou si l'on doit tout simplement faire tous les efforts pour éviter les recroissances non-contrôlées.The presence of heterotrophic bacteria in drinking water (tap, point-of use treated or bottled) poses a difficult problem because we do not clearly know if they are really innocuous. Two points of views are presented: they could be totally unimportant whatever their number or they can be opportunistic pathogens and even frank pathogens if they are allowed to multiply in large numbers. These bacteria are not of faecal origin and are not indicators of faecal pollution even if occasionally some can be described as coliforms. Studies in the United States on families drinking water from domestic filtration units did not observe any significant health effects while other researchers have observed an inhibitory effect of these heterotrophic bacteria on coliforms and some pathogenic bacteria. On the other band, recent Canadian studies have observed that high bacterial counts in the water produced by reverse-osmosis units were correlated to gastrointestinal illnesses and that bacteria of potential virulence were present in tap water. All these observations have brought back the question of the potential health effects of heterotrophic bacteria. At the same time, the ability of current water quality indicators to protect public health is questioned and we must find other methods for the surveillance of waterborne diseases. Within these new guidelines or regulations, will probably have to set a limit on the acceptable number of heterotrophic bacteria in water. What this level will be remains to be determined, but until then we must assume that it is prudent to test drinking water in such a way, that it will not promote or permit the uncontrolled multiplication of bacteria of which we know so little. We are discovering new pathogens each year and we cannot assume that they are not present in treated waters. There are two approaches that can be used to limit potential health risks. The first is to limit the total population of heterotrophic bacteria by limiting available nutrients and using appropriate enumeration methods (heterotrophic plate count or epifluorescence viable counts). The second is to use or develop an indicator of health risk based on the virulence of bacteria (i.e., detection of virulence factors). There are still long discussions and researches ahead, but the driving force will be probably directed at limiting the nutrient available to heterotrophic bacteria and preventing significant growth in water distribution systems

A multi-agent architecture for electronic payment

The Internet has brought about innumerable changes to the way enterprises do business. An essential problem to be solved before the widespread commercial use of the Internet is to provide a trustworthy solution for electronic payment. We propose a multi-agent mediated electronic payment architecture in this paper. It is aimed at providing an agent-based approach to accommodate multiple e-payment schemes. Through a layered design of the payment structure and a well-defined uniform payment interface, the architecture shows good scalability. When a new e-payment scheme or implementation is available, it can be plugged into the framework easily. In addition, we construct a framework allowing multiple agents to work cooperatively to realize automation of electronic payment. A prototype has been built to illustrate the functionality of this design. Finally we discuss the security issues

Towards an Economic Analysis of Routing in Payment Channel Networks

Payment channel networks are supposed to overcome technical scalability limitations of blockchain infrastructure by employing a special overlay network with fast payment confirmation and only sporadic settlement of netted transactions on the blockchain. However, they introduce economic routing constraints that limit decentralized scalability and are currently not well understood. In this paper, we model the economic incentives for participants in payment channel networks. We provide the first formal model of payment channel economics and analyze how the cheapest path can be found. Additionally, our simulation assesses the long-term evolution of a payment channel network. We find that even for small routing fees, sometimes it is cheaper to settle the transaction directly on the blockchain.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, SERIAL '17 Worksho

Optimal Dividend Payments for the Piecewise-Deterministic Poisson Risk Model

This paper considers the optimal dividend payment problem in piecewise-deterministic compound Poisson risk models. The objective is to maximize the expected discounted dividend payout up to the time of ruin. We provide a comparative study in this general framework of both restricted and unrestricted payment schemes, which were only previously treated separately in certain special cases of risk models in the literature. In the case of restricted payment scheme, the value function is shown to be a classical solution of the corresponding HJB equation, which in turn leads to an optimal restricted payment policy known as the threshold strategy. In the case of unrestricted payment scheme, by solving the associated integro-differential quasi-variational inequality, we obtain the value function as well as an optimal unrestricted dividend payment scheme known as the barrier strategy. When claim sizes are exponentially distributed, we provide easily verifiable conditions under which the threshold and barrier strategies are optimal restricted and unrestricted dividend payment policies, respectively. The main results are illustrated with several examples, including a new example concerning regressive growth rates.Comment: Key Words: Piecewise-deterministic compound Poisson model, optimal stochastic control, HJB equation, quasi-variational inequality, threshold strategy, barrier strateg

PayPal in Romania

The present paper refers to the usefulness of online payment through PayPal and to the development of this payment manner in Romania. PayPal is an example of a payment intermediary service that facilitates worldwide e-commerce.Comment: 8 pages, exposed on 5th International Conference "Actualities and Perspectives on Hardware and Software" - APHS2009, Timisoara, Romani