VeriShield Protect, announced last month, is designed to thwart continuing criminal efforts to gather unencrypted account holder data via breaches of merchant networks, applications and servers that come in contact with consumer credit and debit card information.

"VeriShield Protect and Secure PumpPAY product will enable VeriFone retail petroleum partners to virtually eliminate the possibility of a data compromise across their corporate brands," said Jeff Wakefield, VeriFone vice president of marketing, Integrated Systems. "VeriShield Protect will protect card transactions that originate in the store as well as at the petroleum forecourt where over half of petroleum retailer card transactions originate."

VeriShield Protect was developed to prevent compromise of cardholder data even in the event of a breach. VeriShield Protect shields credit and debit account information from the moment a card is swiped until the data is received at a secure decryption appliance located in a merchant's secure data center, at an off-site service provider, or at an acquirer or processor organization.

VeriFone's Secure PumpPAY is the most secure option for fuel dispenser card payments available to the petroleum industry today. It is the only PCI-approved solution that includes PCI EPP (electronic PIN pad) keypad, secure magnetic stripe reader, Triple-DES encryption and the ability to cryptographically mask all customer account information at the card reader. It meets the PCI requirements that must be retrofitted in existing fuel dispensers by July 1, 2010 and adopted in all new fuel dispensers as of January 1, 2009.

The retailer environment is often too complex to be completely locked down against all intruders and it is unrealistic to expect merchants to maintain constant vigilance over every access point and every location where data is stored or transported.

Backed by a suite of PCI compliant services including managed intrusion detection and protection systems, VeriFone provides a complete end-to-end security solution for petroleum retailers and other merchants.

The VeriShield Protect system employs a breakthrough technology called
H-TDES (Hidden-Triple Data Encryption Standard) to encrypt the personal account number (PAN) and magnetic-stripe track data in a manner that other applications interpret as valid card data. The data is encrypted within the tamper resistant security modules of VeriFone's PCI-approved payment systems so that it can safely be transmitted over retailer networks to a centralized secure decryption appliance from Semtek Innovative Solutions Corp., the developer of H-TDES.

VeriShield Protect is currently available on the MX800 Series platform, and will be available on the Secure PumpPAY and Vx Solutions product families later this year.