Data and electronic communications are prime targets for hackers and cyber thieves. The challenge to protect payment data impacts us all, and it's constantly changing. That's why protecting the integrity of the payment system and your data needs to be a first priority. Merchants need to consider – especially in the brick-and-mortar space – tokenization and point-to-point encryption. These methods are gaining in popularity and are expected to see even mahigher adoption rate in the years to come. Separately, transactions over the Internet or any form of e-commerce are considered card-not-present transactions. Now, due to new technology and regulations (including the roll-out of EMV), the tides have turned and the U.S. can expect a wave of card-not-present fraud on individual merchants.