The PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) published guidance today on the secure development and maintenance of software designed to run on point-of-interaction (POI) devices.  

POI devices are hardware or software components in point-of-sale equipment that allow a consumer to use a credit card to make a purchase, such as a PIN pad. According to the PCI SSC, the document is intended to address software that exists on POI devices, including payment and non-payment applications, and reinforce the importance of a layered approach to security.

“The goal of this document is to ensure that all organizations responsible for software development (and device management) understand the potential threats, and employ appropriate processes throughout the development life cycle to counter those threats,” according to the document. “The processes followed will depend on the organization, the type of application being developed, and the software languages used, but the principles remain the same.”

The document is meant to help organizations – including POI device vendors – that write or implement applications within a POI device understand the threats and counter them throughout the development lifecycle, according to the PCI SSC. It also comes at a time when cybercriminals have increasingly been paying attention to point-of-sale devices and targeting both retailers as well as vendors of point-of-sale devices (PoS). 

“Criminals are looking at every aspect of a payment transaction to find ways for data exfiltration,” said PCI SSC Chief Technology Officer Troy Leach, in a statement. “While consumers and merchants alike benefit from additional features, complexity and increasing dependency on third-party applications can create new opportunities for exploit which is why due diligence is so vital in the development of software that terminals rely upon. This paper highlights important best practices for software coding in this unique environment.”

According to the PCI SSC, organizations can use this guidance to help ensure standard secure coding practices are followed, including:

Security awareness training that supports secure software development:

• Those involved in the development process (including software developers and peer reviewers), have important roles to play in developing software to ensure secure coding practices are implemented and address current threats. Those roles need to be defined before development begins and those individuals need to be trained and understand the secure software development program.

Secure software development lifecycle:

• Organizations need to have a software security roadmap defined before development begins that will address known threats. The software needs to be mapped and documented, and rules and processes defined so that security is implemented as part of the development process and not incorporated as an afterthought.

Device-level testing:

• It is imperative to understand how the application will work when used with the hardware, firmware, and other applications that it is intended for use with. While simulators and unit testing are essential, testing the device with the complete solution should be a priority.

Internal process reviews:

• The threat environment is constantly evolving which is why organizations need to stay current on the latest threats and changes to ensure the procedures in place are still sufficient and are actually being followed.

Michael Belton, team lead of assessment services at Rapid7, said that for an average retailer, performing hardware and software security testing on a product they purchased is cost-prohibitive.

“Security awareness training for developers, along with secure software development lifecycle practices, help ensure consistency across developers working on an application,” he said. “This consistency in security design and expectations means applications are released with fewer bugs that can be exploited. Penetration testers encounter issues related to security lifecycle practices every time they perform an assessment. These two items are perhaps the most critical challenges towards creating software that operates in a secure and predictable manner.”

The document can be read here.

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Media reports affirm that malicious insiders are real. But unintentional or negligent actions can introduce significant risks to sensitive information too. Some employees simply forget security best practices or shortcut them for convenience reasons, while others just make mistakes.

Some may not have received sufficient security awareness training and are oblivious to the ramifications of their actions or inactions. They inadvertently download malware, accidentally misconfigure systems, or transmit and store sensitive data in ways that place it at risk of exposure.

Personnel change too. Companies hire new employees, and promote and transfer individuals to new roles. They augment staff with temporary workers and contractors. New leadership comes onboard. Many of these insiders require legitimate access to sensitive information, but needs differ with changing roles, tenure, or contract length. It’s extremely challenging to manage user identities and access privileges in this environment, not to mention the people themselves. A person who was once trustworthy might gradually become an insider threat – while another becomes a threat immediately, overnight.

New technologies and shifting paradigms further complicate matters. The evolving trends of mobility, cloud computing and collaboration break down the traditional network perimeter and create complexity. While these new tools and business models enhance productivity and present new opportunities for competitive advantage, they also introduce new risks.

At the same time, you can’t ignore outsider threats which are responsible for the lion’s share of breaches. Since 2008, the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report has shown that external actors – not insiders – are responsible for the vast majority of the breaches they investigated. Some of the top reasons why breaches were successful include: weak credentials, malware propagation, privilege misuse, and social tactics. These are precisely the types of weaknesses that trace back to the actions (or inactions) of insiders.

The question isn’t whether to focus on the insider or outsider threat. The question is how to defend against both – equally effectively.

What’s needed is a threat-centric approach to security that provides comprehensive visibility, continuous control, and advanced threat protection regardless of where the threat originates. To enable this new security model, look for technologies that are based on the following tenets:

Visibility-driven: Security administrators must be able to accurately see everything that is happening. When evaluating security technologies, breadth and depth of visibility are equally important to gain knowledge about environments and threats. Ask vendors if their technologies will allow you to see and gather data from a full spectrum of potential attack vectors across the network fabric, endpoints, email and web gateways, mobile devices, virtual environments, and the cloud. These technologies must also offer depth, meaning the ability to correlate that data and apply intelligence to understand context and make better decisions.

Threat-focused: Modern networks extend to wherever employees are, wherever data is, and wherever data can be accessed from. Keeping pace with constantly evolving attack vectors is a challenge for security professionals and an opportunity for insider and outsider threats. Policies and controls are essential to reduce the surface area of attack, but breaches still happen. Look for technologies that can also detect, understand, and stop threats once they’ve penetrated the network and as they unfold. Being threat-focused means thinking like an attacker, applying visibility and context to understand and adapt to changes in the environment, and then evolving protections to take action and stop threats.

Platform-based: Security is now more than a network issue; it requires an integrated system of agile and open platforms that cover the network, devices, and the cloud. Seek out a security platform that is extensible, built for scale, and can be centrally managed for unified policy and consistent controls. This is particularly important since breaches often stem from the same weaknesses regardless of whether they result from insider actions or an external actor. This constitutes a shift from deploying simply point security appliances that create security gaps, to integrating a true platform of scalable services and applications that are easy to deploy, monitor, and manage.

Protecting against today’s threats – whether they originate from the inside or the outside – is equally challenging. But they have a lot in common – tapping into many of the same vulnerabilities and methods to accomplish their missions. There’s no need to choose which to prioritize as you allocate precious resources. With the right approach to security you can protect your organization’s sensitive information from both insiders and outsiders.

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