JEFFERSONVILLE, Ind. - Heartland Payment Systems is taking steps to ensure retailers won??t suffer from security breaches at point-of-sale, BankInfoSecurity reports. The payments processor experienced a large breach three years ago.

The company is assisting merchants to meet the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCIDS) and providing education on POS and payment card security. Heartland is also working with retailers on upgrading POS hardware and networks.

Heartland started to dialogue more with merchants after discovering that many had little expertise in security. "Their specialty is not in securing networks," said John South, chief security officer for Heartland. "And many have little or no experience in installing hardware or software to do that."

The company also helps retailers who experience breaches, calling on its own hard lessons after its 2009 breach affected around 130 million credit and debit cards. Heartland openly talked about how it failed, and started working on enhancing card security and PCI compliance.

In the future, South views remote-access hacking as the big one to look out for, one every retailer should have on its radar. "Statistically, right now, remote-access capabilities, for whoever installs the system, are posing the greatest threat," he said. "Card skimming is still a problem, but it's just one of several ways that card data can be attacked."

The best defense against remote-access hacking is to have up-to-date POS systems and security measures, South said. Older versions are vulnerable to hacking because they can be more easily manipulated.