The Optus data hack that was announced yesterday is serious. As to how serious, it’s too early to sell since Optus is yet to be sure as to the extent.
What we don’t understand is how Optus had this data organised and stored.
Our advice to our customers is to not, ever, store customer credit card, licence or other key identifying details in one place.
It’s why we recommend all payments are done through secure gateways, with only those gateways capturing and processing payment. This way the POS software itself does not need to store or even know the payment method or account numbers.
We also recommend any identifying details required for age specific purchased, details like a licence number, are sighted and accepted, but not stored. It doesn’t make sense to us to store a licence number or passport number. Maybe Optus had their reasons.
The last thing any business wants is to be responsible for the release into the public domain of private identifying details for any customer.
Software companies have a responsibility to provide tech platforms that meet the needs of local businesses. We have, in the past, been asked to store personal identifying details of customers, and declined. We explained the security risk. Some who asked understood. Others, it turned out, were not a good fit for us.
Software companies, like our POS software company’s have a responsibility to also provide advice to our customers since we are likely to be the tech experts in their world., We can’t make them behave a certain way, but we can at least explain what’s best when it comes to data security, protection from hacks and best practice backup tools to enable recovery would a hack be successful.
Local indie small businesses retailers following the advice we provide could not, ever, find themselves in the situation of Optus as the sensitive personal data would not be there to be taken in a hack.
Here at Tower Systems we take our role of making and supporting POS software for local indie retailers seriously. We are grateful to the 3,000+ local indie retail customer we serve for their support and engagement,. it means a lot to us and all who rely on us.
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