Group releases credit-card software standard

Plastic cards proliferate our world and many of them have magnetic strips on them that are used to store private information. This has played a role in some of the most dramatic instances of system failure where the privacy of sensitive information has been breached, such as those at Hannaford Bros and the TJX Companies. The PCI Security Standards Council has released a new standard that will hopefullly improve on that situation by limiting the type of information stored on the magnetic strips for credit cards. Of course, credit card fraud in one the the biggest menaces facing commerce - online and offline - today. The new standard can be downloaded at https://www.pcisecuritystandards.org/pdfs/04-15-08.pdf and there is a sumary of it at the following link: Group releases credit-card software standard