The holiday season is a prime time for fraudsters to target consumers' credit cards and it's not surprising that Dexter has come to light a week before Christmas.

 Dexter is yet another malware variation that targets point-of-sale purchases by skimming debit and credit cards and stealing account holders' details for subsequent fraudulent use.

Dexter proves that card data at the Point of Sale can be stolen, and it completely undermines the underlying security model. This will of course shock those elements of corporate society who place complete faith and trust in traditional security methods. Why the surprise? Tokens were compromised in 2005 and Certificates in 2007……and, rest assured, any binary security method can and will be compromised. Why? Because there are too many components in the process flow, and somewhere along the line, a process can be compromised, thereby compromising the entire process. It’s the reason why Federated Security is vulnerable and therefore, fundamentally flawed.

The world has changed and we can never look back. A new approach is required, a new security model that’s multi-layered, multi-factor, where the complexity is hidden but flexibility is high. A model with a built-in assumption that any traditional security method can be compromised. A model that allows complete discrimination at an individual transaction level, at the right price-point relative to the value of the transaction and the perceived risk of that transaction. A model that provides “low or no” customer friction. Is this fiction? No, simply the reality of what many forward thinking organisations are already contemplating or implementing, and it’s about to go main-stream.