Card Control app helps users protect their credit cards from hacking

Bad news for credit card hackers. Here comes a 'remote control' app that can help users turn their credit cards on and off with the click of a button, and also control when, where, and how they are used.

Run by two Indian American entrepreneurs, a San Jose-based startup called OnDot Systems has unveiled an app named Card Control, which acts as a kind of 'remote control' for credit, debit, and prepaid cards.

The app requires no external hardware and no special credit cards.

"We sells Card Control directly to banks and credit card processors who offer it as a special service to their customers. OnDot collects a per-user licensing fee from the banks and processors," Rachna Ahlawat, CEO, OnDot was quoted as saying.

Selling directly to institutions and not to individuals was a careful decision, Vaduvur Bharghavan, founder of the company, noted.

"We tell the banks to offer this to your customers as a convenience," Bharghavan added.

OnDot has signed deals with four major credit card processors, who collectively process transactions for 10,000 banks and credit unions across the country, a report in wired.com said.

According to Verizon's 2014 Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR), 2013 can be termed at the year of retailer breach and can also be considered as the year of transition from geopolitical attacks to large-scale attacks on payment card systems.

Verizon's DBIR report added that financially motivated attackers are hyper-focused on gaining access to the money, so it follows that their two primary target industries are the financial and retail industries (where data that easily converts to money is abundant and all too often, accessible).

"Within the financial industry, they focus on gaining access to the user interface of the web (banking) application more so than exploiting the web application itself, because the application grants logical access to the money. "This means they target user credentials and simply use web applications protected with a single factor (password) as the conduit to their goal," the report added.

Written with inputs from IANS and PTI