Verifone selects Thales to protect card holder data

Verifone standardizes on Thales HSMs for high performance, scalable, end-to-end encryption

RSA Conference 2015, San Francisco, CA and Plantation, Fl – April 20, 2015 –Thales, leader in critical information systems and cybersecurity, announces that Verifone now uses Thales nShield hardware security modules (HSMs) for its end-to-end payment encryption solution – VeriShield Total Protect – to provide robust, high speed, scalable crypto to protect card holder data, whether transmitted from a card or mobile device, right from the moment of capture.

Thales HSMs provide a highly secure, high speed and scalable solution in Verifone’s end-to-end encryption architecture, which reduces the risk of payment card data compromise within a merchant’s retail environment. The protection of payment card data by encrypting from Verifone’s secure payment terminals all the way to the Thales HSMs also dramatically reduces the number of applicable Payment Card Industry (PCI) controls, simplifying the deployment environment for the merchant.

VeriShield Total Protect from Verifone protects merchants, payment providers and consumers alike by encrypting card holder information from the moment it is captured at the terminal until it is securely accessed behind a processor’s firewall. Thales HSMs are used to perform secure key exchanges and secure key derivations that produce a unique key to protect each and every payment transaction. All the decryption is performed within the Thales HSMs, protecting the encryption keys from virtually any attack. Taking advantage of capabilities unique to the Thales Security World architecture, Verifone is able to seamlessly combine multiple HSMs at multiple data centers to service very high transaction volumes with automated load balancing and failover, a capability not offered by other solution providers.

Joe Majka, Chief Security Officer, Verifone, says:
“As a global payment solutions and commerce enablement leader, Verifone’s strategy is to develop and deploy “best in class” payment solutions and services that meet or exceed global security standards and help our clients securely accept electronic payments across all channels of commerce. We selected Thales HSMs to provide robust security, unmatched performance and superior scalability across our payment security platforms, protecting encryption keys from virtually any attack. This helps Verifone to continue reducing merchants’ growing exposure to data breaches and cyber criminals and more aggressively safeguard consumer information through the multi-layered approach to security that Verifone is known for, which goes well beyond the requirements of PCI DSS.”

Cindy Provin, President, Thales e-Security Inc., says:
“Direct attacks on payment devices have become increasingly common and highly sophisticated, but strongly encrypted card holder data is useless if ever there were a breach. Thales’s extensive expertise and leadership in the payment market, enriched by our long-standing partnerships with leading payments processing vendors, helps customers such as Verifone reduce risk, trim costs and future-proof their payments infrastructures as the payment industry sees new challenges and business models emerge. We are delighted that after evaluating solutions from other vendors, Verifone has chosen to use Thales HSMs to protect its payment security technology, giving merchants, processors and consumers complete confidence that unencrypted data will never be exposed to potential thieves.”