Visa Putting Retail IT Execs Everywhere but Where They Want to Be.(Visa U.S.A. Inc. contracts with Fujitsu Corp.)

Publication: eWeek

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Ziff Davis Media Inc.

Visa recently sent a confidential memo to selected business partners advising them of a potentially major security threat involving Fujitsu POS software.

We all know this because the memo was leaked to the Wall Street Journal, which prompted tons of media--including eWEEK, of course--to cover the story. The culprit seemed to be a tracer testing utility that Fujitsu provided to some customers, which apparently at least one customer continued to use in a live environment, which is a major security no-no. That part's old news. But what has gone on in the days since the memo leaked is sadly reminiscent of the old public security conundrum: the need to alert customers to a major security problem in as public and fast a way as possible, knowing that satanic evildoers--which could accurately describe criminal hackers intending to steal credit card information or my in-laws, but that's another column--will immediately try to take advantage of the security hole.

Most of the smarter bad guys know that they have an XX-hour (and often an XX-day) window after a major security hole is announced before most systems administrators will install the patch or make appropriate adjustments.

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