US president Barack Obama has signed an executive order mandating the use of chip and PIN technology at executive departments and agencies for card payments.
With more than a 100 million Americans falling to data breaches over the past year, thanks in part to massive attacks on the likes of Target, Home Depot and JPMorgan, the Obama administration has moved to get its own house in order.
From 1 January, cards issued by the federal government to distribute benefits will have to be chip and PIN and payment terminals acquired by agencies through the department of the treasury will also be upgraded.
“We know this technology works — when Britain switched to a chip-and-pin system, they cut fraud in stores by 70%,” says the president.
For online transactions, Obama has given a group of agencies 90 days to come up with a plan to ensure that all those making personal data accessible to citizens through digital applications use multiple factors of authentication and an effective identity proofing process.
Obama ha also set out plans designed to cut the time victims of identity theft have to wait for remediation and actions designed to improve credit score transparency.
