What is a POS System?
Point of Sale (POS) system is an effective combination of hardware-based and software-based system that serves a medium to direct the transactions involved in the check out process during a product purchase.
The hardware in the POS system is framed to print receipts, store cash and scan the product barcode. The software of the POS systems is defined to manipulate the metrics involved – tracking the inventory, quantifies the number of sales and it transfer funds to the bank account associated with your business.
Though POS system brings a bunch of benefits to the retail owners by automating the transaction processes while it also becomes user-friendly for customers who carry plastic cards and not physical cash – with POS systems, its just a swipe and the transaction is done. However, there are high levels of associated security risks.
Hacktivists have been constantly finding new methods to compromise POS systems on a regular basis. Its uncertain about when the next attack will probably take place.
A tell-tale on the recent POS system breach
A US-based restaurant chain “Huddle house” was tremendously attacked by the POS breach that resulted in data loss of customer’s card information. The impact of such security breaches gives hackers a full control over the customer’s payment card information. They can exploit the customers’ card details to do purchases without any acknowledgement from the customers, the hackers are good to sell the customer’s card details to the under-world market. Therefore choosing the right POS system and implementing some preventive security measures upfront would help you stay ahead of POS system breaches.
How does a hacker launch a POS System attack
POS systems are a treasure trove of sensitive customer data and hackers have turned their attention to find ways to attack the customer data. Cyber thieves launch a monitoring device to gain a backdoor access and extract the card details of the customer from remote. They use RAM scrapers to scan the POS terminal memory and therefore cause a massive security data breach.
Some of the best POS systems for 2019
ALOHA POS Systems
Aloha is a Single Point of Sale Platform, which is used by over 75,000 restaurants across the globe. Most of the cashiers in the restaurant industry have been trained to use ALOHA. It assists to generate reports about the employee data, operational sales and also helps to understand about the revenue generated.
VEND POS Systems
The next in the list is VEND which has been developed to be used by retail stores. This is defined to track and record customer’s shopping habits in the database, quantify the performance of the store in terms of revenue, helps to implement inventory management across multiple stores. It is versatile to integrate with other critical business tools like Apple, PayPal, Shopify and more.
SQUARE POS Systems
This POS system is used by over 2 million enterprises worldwide. This provides digital receipts, gather and record customer feedback, helps you track and manage your inventory, produce sales reports, send purchase receipts online. SQUARE POS can transfer your funds to the respective bank account, accept gift cards, cash and debit/credit/atm cards.
TOAST POS Systems
This is a POS system designed and developed for restaurants. It can keep a track of the inventory, calculate and record the food costs and the actual recipe costs as well.
It can produce sales reports, synchronize both the online and the physical in-store menu so if there is a change in the in-store menu the online menu options automatically changes and vice versa.
How to improve POS systems security
• Keep your POS software up-to-date with the latest security patches.
• Install efficient security suite system that includes antivirus and firewall
• Effective password management which ensures frequent password changes and creation of complex passwords
• Denying internet access to the POS systems
• Avoid remote access to the POS systems
