Security - Consult Hyperion

Future-Ready Payments Processing

17th November 20202nd September 2024by Gary MunroLeave a comment

Payment Processing Platforms

At Consult Hyperion we spend a lot of our time looking into payments processing platforms for our clients. Over recent months we’ve delivered;

technical due diligence, assessing their capabilities
security and vulnerability analysis on networks and products
designed fundamental security architectures for new payments solutions
advised clients on the selection of payment platform solutions
and helped design new platforms or extended the capability of their existing platforms

It’s fair to say we have a comprehensive understanding of payments processing. The products and solutions offered by Fintechs, Banks, Neobanks etc. rely on the capabilities of the underlying payments platform(s).

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Fintech South 2020 – Maintaining trust and safety in a digital world

17th November 20202nd September 2024by David G.W. BirchLeave a comment

At the (sadly, virtual) Fintech South event the year, I was asked to chair a discussion on identity and privacy with three extremely well-qualified experts who had informed perspectives on the state of, and trends in, those important pillars of a digital society. These were Adam Gunther (SVP, Digital Identity for Equifax), Andrew Gowasack (Co-Founder and President at TrustStamp) and Megan Heinze (President, Financial Institutions, North America for IDEMIA). It was great to talk to a group of people who were not only well-informed on these topics but had some passion for them too.

I won’t go over everything that was discussed, but I do want to pick up on a comment that was made in passing when I was chatting to the panelists: someone said that a guiding principle should be “no scary systems”. Hear hear! But what is a scary system? It is, in my opinion, a system that privileges security over privacy. This is not how we should be designing the identity systems for the 21st century!

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Malware Wolves in Developer Sheep’s Clothing

11th November 20202nd September 2024by Ian PrinceLeave a comment

When consumers install software on their devices, they often perform some sort of risk evaluation, even if they don’t consciously realise it. They might consider who provides the software, whether it is from an app-store, what social media says, and whether they have seen any reviews. But what if once a piece of software had been installed, the goalposts moved, and something that was a genuine software tool at the time of installation turned into a piece of malware overnight.

This is what happened to approximately 300,000 active users of Chrome ad blocking extension Nano Adblocker. You see, at the beginning of October, the developer of Nano Adblocker sold it to another developer who promptly deployed malware into it that issued likes to hundreds of Instagram posts without user interaction. There is some suspicion that it may have also been uploading session cookies.

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Internet voting – challenging but necessary

10th November 20202nd September 2024by Steve Pannifer3 Comments

What did you think of the US election? I don’t mean the candidates and the outcome. What did you think of the election process? Should it be possible for national elections of this type to be done online? Last week the IET published a paper on internet voting in the UK, led by our good friend at the University of Surrey, Professor Steve Schneider. It’s well worth a read. As the paper explains, internet voting for statutory political elections is a uniquely challenging problem. Firstly voting systems have exacting requirements and secondly, the stakes are high with the threat of state level interference.

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Payment card issuance errors leave you vulnerable to fraud

2nd October 20202nd September 2024by Nick NormanLeave a comment

As Consult Hyperion, and as many other analysts, predicted, Covid-19 has driven the adoption and use of contact-free technology at the point of service. A recent survey funded by the National Retail Foundation, found that no-touch payments have increased for 69 percent of US retailers surveyed, since January 2020. In May, Mastercard reported that 78% of all their transactions across Europe were contactless.

Fraudsters are always looking for ways to take advantage of potential weaknesses or even inexperience in new payment devices. A recent news story promoted a man in the middle attack in which two phones are used to transfer and manipulate the transaction message between a stolen contactless card and the point of sale terminal.

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