Visa Threat Intelligence, Powered by FireEye, will provide an intelligence portal to help identify and respond to attacks on the payments system
Visa Inc. and FireEye Inc. has announced the launch of Visa Threat Intelligence, Powered by FireEye. Tailored to the needs of the payments industry, this new service will deliver real-time threat information to merchants and issuers so they can quickly assess and act on the most critical cyber-attacks that could breach their payment systems.
Visa Threat Intelligence is the first product available as part of a new global strategic partnership between Visa Inc. and FireEye. Beginning late 2015, subscribers will gain access to a powerful web portal that distils the latest proprietary cyber intelligence relevant to payment systems into actionable information, including timely alerts on malicious actors, methods, trends in cyber-attacks, and in-depth forensic analysis from recent data beaches.
“Each week, merchants and card issuers receive thousands of alerts about possible cyber-attacks, making it difficult to know which ones to focus on,” said Mark Nelsen, Senior Vice President of Risk Products and Business Intelligence, Visa Inc. “Visa Threat Intelligence removes the noise by assessing hundreds of threat indicators and serving up the most important and timely information. Users can then isolate and address those threats that are the most pressing and potentially damaging to their business and customers.”
More sophisticated users can also take advantage of APIs that can automatically feed threat indicator data into their own security systems. A premium offering will grant access to advanced tools, powered by FireEye Multi-Vector Virtual Execution (MVX™) technology, that analyse and isolate malicious indicators from malware to identify suspicious activity from IP addresses and domains.
In addition, Visa Threat Intelligence will provide a secure platform where clients can opt to form trusted communities and safely exchange real-time threat intelligence. Leveraging community-based intelligence is crucial to a comprehensive defence strategy because many attack groups run campaigns that target organisations with a similar profile.
“Attack groups are exceptionally skilled at executing an attack across multiple organisations, identifying successful techniques and scaling those methods to an entire industry,” said Grady Summers, SVP and Chief Technology Officer, FireEye. “By partnering with Visa, we can provide targeted intelligence to the payments industry to combat the economies of scale that attackers employ, and help create a community united in a common defence.”
As noted in the latest FireEye M-Trends report, the payments industry continues to be an attractive target for cyber criminals as attackers find new ways to steal credit card numbers from point-of-sale (POS) systems. Through this global strategic relationship, Visa and FireEye are looking at new ways to empower merchants, issuers, and other payments players with the best technology, intelligence and expertise to protect their organisations. In early 2016, the partnership is expected to roll out additional solutions to identify malicious communications and recommend remediation steps based on activity in the network as well as infection rates across the network.
For more information about Visa Threat Intelligence, Powered by FireEye, email VisaThreatIntelligence@visa.
About Visa Inc.: Visa Inc. (NYSE: V) is a global payments technology company that connects consumers, businesses, financial institutions, and governments in more than 200 countries and territories to fast, secure and reliable electronic payments. We operate one of the world’s most advanced processing networks — VisaNet — that is capable of handling more than 65,000 transaction messages a second, with fraud protection for consumers and assured payment for merchants. Visa is not a bank and does not issue cards, extend credit or set rates and fees for consumers. Visa’s innovations, however, enable its financial institution customers to offer consumers more choices: pay now with debit, ahead of time with prepaid or later with credit products. For more information, visit usa.visa.com/about-visa, visacorporate.tumblr.com and @VisaNews.
About FireEye, Inc: FireEye has invented a purpose-built, virtual machine-based security platform that provides real-time threat protection to enterprises and governments worldwide against the next generation of cyber attacks. These highly sophisticated cyber attacks easily circumvent traditional signature-based defenses, such as next-generation firewalls, IPS, anti-virus, and gateways. The FireEye Threat Prevention Platform provides real-time, dynamic threat protection without the use of signatures to protect an organization across the primary threat vectors and across the different stages of an attack life cycle. The core of the FireEye platform is a virtual execution engine, complemented by dynamic threat intelligence, to identify and block cyber attacks in real time. FireEye has over 3,700 customers across 67 countries, including over 675 of the Forbes Global 2000.
