Latest opinions that Stephen Wilson has shared on Finextra

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Stephen Wilson

Managing Director

Lockstep Consulting

Member since

24 Apr 2008

Location

Sydney

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Stephen's opinions

If US banks still need convincing on chips ...

If only we could get our collective heads around the problem of assuring the pedigree of online information -- be it credit card numbers, or simply name and address -- the ROI for chip cards would be plain to see. Observation:$100B worth of fraud is ID related Premise: To prevent personal data being replayed behind the backs of its owners, those da...

10 November 2009

Kaspersky and his Internet Passport: surely he jests

OMG. Eugene Kaspersky wants an Internet Passport because he says "anonymity causes security headaches and should be outlawed". This is madness. The social repurcussions are surely obvious, while it's not clear what problem it might solve. Most cybercrime is actually linked to an excess of arbitrary identification, with inadequate safe...

28 October 2009 /security /regulation Online Banking

Maybe security designers need to live with human nature

OK, so people generally reveal too much about themselves. They tend to be more trusting than security advisers would like them to be. So, where to next? Some will view this video with alarm and will conclude that the huge investment in public awareness hasn't been enough. Perhaps they will advocate even more training and education. But others mi...

20 October 2009

End to end Encryption will not dent black market

Randy Vanderhoof of the Smart Card Alliance speaks a great deal of common sense about end-to-end encryption. It won't do anything to prevent replay attacks, nor to take the value out of stolen ID data. All it does is protect data-at-rest at intermediaries, and data-in-motion through a portion of the payment processing chain. So the black market ...

14 September 2009

Hotel databases and identity thieves

Hotel databases are a fantastic target for identity thieves. Hotels don't just hold credit card numbers and billing addresses (which are held for weeks in advance of a stay and for weeks afterwards to secure incidentals), but for many customers the hotel also has their home address, driver licence number, airline memberships, and ... drum roll .....

19 August 2009 /security

PCIed out yet?

Wow! Are we all PCIed out? The Network Solutions breach was announced on Friday 24th, and four or five days later we still haven't heard any accusations about whether they were or were not PCI compliant! Perhaps that sinking feeling is transforming into a realisation that there's not much that PCI compliance can do to thwart these sophisticated at...

27 July 2009

You can't complain about interoperability, except ...

I hope Kantara will be different but I have yet to see an identity interoperabiity initiative that properly articulates the real probelm it's trying to solve. A wise person once said something along the lines that the question is sometimes more important than the answer. So, what precisely is meant by "interoperability" of identities? ...

20 June 2009

We need clearer thinking about privacy and security

There's still not enough clear thinking about the nature of personal information being traded and lost online. Not all information is the same! In examining the terrible trend in personal information losses, Tower Group remarks that "While greater access to customer data is key for businesses to improve customer relationship management and b...

17 June 2009

An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of audit

While dissatisfaction with the PCI standards has been simmering for some time, the debate is now boiling over. And not before time. In March, the US House of Reps’ Homeland Security Committee held a hearing as to whether PCI security standards have been effective in reducing cybercrime. The chair, in his opening remarks, suggested empirically tha...

01 May 2009 /regulation