ORLANDO Fla. —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
Headline-making data breaches can create financial liability and tarnish a restaurant brand as well as the name of some of the victim company’s technology suppliers, agreed participants in the “Technology Executives Panel” moderated by Robert N. Grimes of Accuvia. But who ultimately is responsible for protecting against data breaches, Grimes asked panelists. —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
“The U.S. is the only major market in the world where a government has not put the onus on the banks to solve the problem with technologies,” said Paul Langenbahn, hospitality division president for Radiant Systems Inc. of Alpharetta, Ga. —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
Today, he continued, there is “chip-and-pin technology in Europe” and “technologies you see prevalent in Asia that make a transaction more secure.” —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
But “if you look at the card we use here for transactions, it is the exact same technology we used in the 1960s,” Langenbahn said. “All of the [security] burden has been pushed down on the retailer for something that for 5 or 6 cents per credit card could have been solved by the banks.” —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
He added, “There needs to be a macro-level effort to use our lobbyists and everything else to focus on that, and I think that is something the National Restaurant Association needs to continue to take a leadership role in.” —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
“I’ll put it more strongly: The banks really dropped the ball on this,” said Edward Rothenberg, vice president of operations and restaurant sales and strategies for MICROS Systems Inc., of Columbia, Md. “They left us out there with old technology.” —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
The vendors noted that companies providing in-restaurant point-of-sale systems, including theirs, really only control one aspect of 12 technologies, processes or procedures covered by the guiding Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards. —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
“We did our part,” related to PCI DSS, said panelist Karen Sammon, president of software solutions for PAR of New Hartford, N.Y. —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
She agreed with Langenbahn and Rothenberg that technology suppliers can only consult with customers to the extent they want to be consulted with about the other 11 components of PCI DSS compliance. —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
Sammon also indicated that operator interest in such consultation can vary and vendor attitudes about such collaboration is changing, as data-breach problems “didn’t go away” with the implementation of PCI DSS. —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
“The big [chains] take care of their company and company stores,” she said, but when her firm now works with restaurant chains of from five to 100 units, “they ask us, ‘What else do we need?’” —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
“A year ago we might have said, it’s your responsibility,” she said. “That’s not the case any more.” —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
The supplier executives talked about how more operators are investigating their products supporting online and mobile-device ordering integrated with POS systems, as well as other alternative points of service, including kiosks. Operators also are seeking enhanced customer relationship management applications and mobile-computing devices for marketing and operations, with their primary drivers being desires to build sales and increase efficiency, panelists indicated. —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
David Matthews, senior vice president and chief information officer for the National Restaurant Association, was a panelist, as was Nation’s Restaurant News managing editor Alan Liddle. Matthews said ordering and marketing technologies cited by vendors “are not only here, they are getting bigger.” —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
Of consumers ages 18 to 54 surveyed by the NRA, “over 50 percent indicated that they would use a PC or intelligent phone or other device [to] do their online ordering,” Matthews said. —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.
More than 65 percent of 18-to-24-year-olds and a significant percentage of older consumers said “they would use touch screen devices in full-service restaurants to not only order, but to pay their bill and browse the Internet while they are at the table.” —Vendor representatives participating in an FS/TEC 2009 panel discussion addressing technologies that could assist operators in surviving the recession agreed that banks need to do more to help protect sensitive payment card data.