Arlington, Va. – Yesterday, the Merchant Financial Cyber Partnership announced the next steps for the two industries to continue working together to strengthen the security of the payments system. Launched in February, the Partnership — of which NACS is a member — has succeeded in its goal to work collaboratively across the payments system to enhance security in order to protect customers and their data from cyber threats. Strong and productive relationships have been formed across the merchant and financial industries throughout the course of the Partnership’s work and both industries will continue to maintain these relationships.
“This Partnership has been invaluable in ensuring the entire payments system and key stakeholders are working together to combat cyber attacks,” said Sandy Kennedy, co-chair of the Partnership and president of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA). “The threat posed by cyber criminals is increasingly sophisticated and is not unique to any one business, institution, industry or government. It is imperative that our two industries continue to learn from each other in this fight and work together in order to maintain the trust of our customers and collaboratively improve overall security.”
This sentiment was echoed Tim Pawlenty, co-chair of the Partnership and CEO of the Financial Services Roundtable (FSR): “Collaboration between our industries and with law enforcement will help protect consumers from cyber criminals. This Partnership has formed key links between our industries and we are hopeful these relationships will improve the entire payment system.”
The Partnership released eight next steps for ongoing collaboration in key areas, including threat information sharing, cyber risk mitigation, advanced card present and card not present security technology, and cybersecurity legislation. One of the major steps is a joint effort between the two industries to urge Congress to pass cyber threat information-sharing legislation.
The Partnership sent a letter to Congress outlining joint principles for legislation to enhance cybersecurity across both the merchant and financial industries. Both industries recognize that better information sharing between and among industry and government is important in preventing cyber attacks. In the letter, the merchant and financial services communities expressed support for a set of principles for federal legislation that would increase the current level of voluntary cybersecurity information sharing, while recognizing key privacy concerns.