We often hear in the Indian context and also in global context about moving towards a ‘cashless society’ , rather call it ‘less of cash society’ to lend practicality to the world of digitalisation.
When we move from cash to cashless from a security perspective there must be substantial focus shift from Physical Security to Logical security. In cash age days, function of storage, transmission, print processing of notes required high degree of physical security. Against this, in the current cashless environment, logical security is a prerequisite and very essential to build a trust and confidence in the system to the extent that users do not think of turning the clock back to “Pay Cash Instead”.
With this logical security focus, comes the trigger of security measures that need to be embedded in the cash less payment technologies whether it be cards, net banking, mobile applications, voice bots, UPI or Aadhar (In India), Wallets, Crypto Currencies and so on..
Essentially, we are looking towards a “Pro Data Security Revolution” which of course is spearheaded by the Payment Card Industry family of Security Standards. Though these look at cards as mode of payment, incubating them for other modes of payment can be a first step towards this revolution
The question arises whose responsibility is it to provide the security for the cash less transactions conducted?
Obviously both players – providers of digital payments and users have a responsibility to share, with primary responsibility on the former. This is because for the end users the security features built in any digital form of payment gets miraged because the main reasons driving them to use of the digital payment methods are the Four ‘C’s Convenience, Concessions, Campaigns and Compulsions. That does not mean security can take a back seat.
Need of the hour then is
- More robust Application Security
- Greater focus on securing personal privacy data
- Innovative methods for user awareness
- Adoption of secure technologies like Blockchain
- Relook at existing security methods- CVV2,PIN, SMS based OTP
- Include the ‘Amount’ as a critical for validation and protection
To conclude, Cash to Card is just a shift of two letters, but securing digital payment methods calls for a whole gamut of security initiatives from all the players in the field, the security experts and the regulators.