BOSTON – Retailers are racing to upgrade cyber security systems ahead of the holiday shopping season, hoping to prevent yet another data breach this year. More retailers are adopting payment technology such as EMV-enabled chip cards, and investing in additional layers of electronic security and better information-sharing on potential threats.

In addition, mobile payment systems, such as Apple Pay, are driving encryption technology forward to deter data thefts, all which will hopefully lead to renewed consumer confidence following a series of well-publicized data breaches.

About 100 million chip cards will be issued by the end of this year, but that’s a fraction of the 1.2 billion total credit and debit cards in the United States, according to industry data. By the end of next year, the number of chip cards should skyrocket to 575 million as banks and merchants accelerate the adoption of the technology to meet implementation deadlines set by Visa and Mastercard.

Preventing data breaches is important to retailers since they can affect consumer behavior as well as store sales, Matt Schulz, a senior industry analyst with CreditCards.com, an online credit card comparison site, told the Boston Globe in a recent article. In a study released last month, the website found that nearly half of consumers were reluctant to return to a store that was hacked. Despite efforts to adopt more secure technologies, Schulz said, banks, retailers and customers should always be prepared for cyber attacks.