Malicious spam phishing emails are an on-going, industry-wide problem. Here are some quick best practices and mitigation guidelines from trusted payment companies like Visa and Security Metrics to help you keep your data safe.

Quick best practices to keep you safe today:

• Retail Pro emails will ALWAYS come from an @retailpro.com email address. Do not click on links, open attachments, or provide sensitive information through a suspicious-looking email with any other address.
• Do not give control of your computer to a third party unless you or your Business Partner initiated the call.
• Do not provide your personal or Retail Pro login information to anyone claiming to be tech support.
• Use caution if you receive an email expressing an urgent need to update your information, activate your online account, or verify your information by clicking on a link.

On-going security best practices from Visa that will help mitigate this threat and other risks to your data:

• Always use two-factor authentication for remote access. Two factor authentication can be something you have (a device) as well as something you know (a password).
• Ensure proper firewalls rules are in place, only allowing remote access only from known IP addresses.
• If remote connectivity is required, enable it only when needed. Contact your POS vendor or integrator to take immediate steps to disable remote access when not in use.
• Restrict access to only the service provider and only for established time periods.
• Contact your support provider or POS vendor and verify that a unique username and password exists for each of your remote management applications.
• Use the latest version of remote management applications and ensure that the latest security patches are applied prior to deployment.
• Enable logging in remote management applications and examine the logs regularly for signs of unknown activity.
• Do not use default or easily-guessed passwords.
• Only use remote access applications that offer strong security controls.
• Plan to migrate away from outdated or unsupported operating systems like Windows XP

Read more from Visa’s 2015 security alert:

Cyber Criminals Targeting Point of Sale Integrators