Retailers, banks target each other in data security blame game

A slew of recent security breaches at major retailers, which left tens of millions of credit and debit cards at risk for fraud, has called bankers, retailers and trade groups to Washington to explain to lawmakers what went wrong.

Bloomberg Businessweek reports that a series of hearings to be held this week in D.C. will focus on what can be done to keep consumers’ information safe from cyber attacks. General consensus is that it’s time for the U.S. to jettison the magnetic strips on the backs of cards and replace them with harder-to-steal computer chips, which are the standard almost everywhere else in the world.
 
Don’t expect much headway to be made at the hearings, however. Bloomberg reports that at the hearings, retailers will insist the banks need to go with the computer chips; the banks will blame the retailers for gathering consumer data they don’t need then, expecting the banks to shoulder the losses when a breach occurs; and legislators, who are limited in what assistance they can provide, will “raise a ruckus, get some headlines and do nothing,” according to industry analysts.

Read more from Bloomberg Businessweek.