How Visa Protects Your Data

"This is Visa's OCE, or Operations Center East, the biggest, newest, and most advanced of its U.S. data centers. It is a data-security heaven--and Visa's acknowledgment that hackers are increasingly savvy, that data is an ever-desirable black-market commodity, and that the best way to keep Visa (and its 150 million daily transactions) safe is to ensconce its network inside a heavily fortified castle that instantly responds to threats. The OCE's 130 workers have two jobs: Keep hackers out and keep the network up, no matter what. That's why rule No. 1 for visitors is: Never reveal its location. "On the eastern seaboard" is as specific as Visa will allow."<p>uhh, right. two articles from the 90s put it in mclean, va: <a href="http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19940101/A_NEWS/301018211" rel="nofollow">http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19940101...</a><p><a href="http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&#38;dat=19931218&#38;id=Z14zAAAAIBAJ&#38;sjid=mAcGAAAAIBAJ&#38;pg=4684,3600394" rel="nofollow">http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&#38;dat=19931218&...</a>

That's cool. But after just returning from a month long road trip across USA (I'm from Slovenia), I'm simply baffled by the lack of security when I'm paying with my Visa card. In 97% of times I just swiped my card and the transaction was done. 1% of the time the cashier bothered to check my ID, 1% of the time I had to sign the check, and in 1% of the time I had to enter my PIN number. What the hell? I'm surprised any of you yanks still have any money left, considering how easy one can take all your money, if one comes into possession of your card.<p>Here you always have to at least sign the card (and the cashier checks the signature against the one on the card), but in most cases you have to enter your PIN number. And I live in fricking Slovenia who was, just 5 minutes ago, a part of a communist union ...<p>Anybody has an explanation for this lack of security in the states?

This really doesn't sound like Visa protecting my data. It sounds more like Visa having enough horsepower and backups so that they can keep their company continuously running.<p>Not that that's a bad thing, but I really don't believe they care about protecting our data. From personal experience, they seem to let any type of fraud occur on your credit card, and then if you protest, then they <i>might</i> reverse the charges. And then they issue you a new credit card number. They would prefer to fix the problem before, putting the onus on us to determine if fraud occurred, rather than actually prevent the fraud and protect our data.

Meanwhile, outside their data centre, they do very little to ensure customer card security and enforce heavy-handed policies that put most of the risk on merchants and downstream processors.<p>--- obDisclosure: I am a merchant who has been defrauded hundreds of thousands of dollars and have no love for the credit card companies.

here it is - you can see the bend and pool. <a href="http://maps.google.cl/maps?q=45005+Russell+Branch+Pkwy,+Ashburn,+VA+20147&#38;ll=39.050654,-77.446444&#38;spn=0.001262,0.001725&#38;hnear=45005+Russell+Branch+Pkwy,+Ashburn,+Virginia+20147,+United+States&#38;gl=cl&#38;t=h&#38;z=19&#38;vpsrc=6" rel="nofollow">http://maps.google.cl/maps?q=45005+Russell+Branch+Pkwy,+Ashb...</a><p>(from looking at job ads)

the mantraps and hand scanners sound insane to I guess all normal people, but in my experience that is a pretty standard level of security. I have a few 1U servers co-located and I have to pass through multiple mantraps with palm readers to access them.

Does anyone know if the Fire Code specifies that "mantraps" have to open in a fire alarm?<p>You should have to have an open path out in that type of a situation.