Lately, there has been quite a bit of mention of a "Heartbleed" Security Flaw. Unless you are an active web developer maintaining some form of website, you are unlikely to be privy as to what Heartbleed actually is.

Heartbleed is not a technical term, but is rather a pseudonym for the failure of the popular encryption library, OpenSSL (Open Secure Sockets Layer).

The primary purpose behind implementations of OpenSSL on websites was to encrypt sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card information. 

What do we learn from 40 million credit cards?

If you happen to be Target, hopefully you learn the importance of P2P encryption (also called point-to-point or end-to-end encryption).

40 million is the number of credit cards compromised when hackers exploited the chain’s point-of-sale system. Target’s not alone, either. Michael’s and Sally Beauty Supply have joined the ranks of companies realizing that in this data-dependent economy, appropriate security is vital to business. The best way to avoid credit card data breaches is with P2P encryption.

Bot nets and key loggers pose a serious threat to the computer systems of all businesses. Even the most prepared networks can be crippled with the ongoing development of these cyber threats.

If you are a network administrator, knowing about bot nets and key loggers is the first line of defense against the malicious code of compromised computers.

Each year fraud costs the credit card industry billions of dollars in lost revenue. On an annual basis retail data breaches expose tens of millions of credit card holders to identity theft and unlawful transactions on their credit. One method that is effective for preventing this type of criminal activity is Point-to-point encryption (P2PE). It is designed to encrypt a customer's credit card information from the time it's used at a merchant's location. It is then not decrypted until it's is away from the merchant's processing environment.