Behind The Secret Doors Of MasterCard’s DigiSec Lab

MasterCard announced this week that it has opened the doors to its digital security facility for consumer viewing.

This lab, MasterCard says, will drive “further collaboration on key issues that can deliver greater payments peace of mind.” The MasterCard DigiSec Lab in England is designed to test threats for digital payments and is acting in collaboration with government security agencies and other security academies.

“The MasterCard DigiSec Lab represents our collective efforts to maximize product innovation and security investments,” said Ajay Bhalla, President of Enterprise Security Solutions at MasterCard, in a company news release. “While payments have never been safer, criminals have never been smarter. We’ve now opened the lab to our customers as part of an ongoing commitment to share insights, solutions and best practices to deliver the highest levels of security.”

Work conducted in the DigiSec Lab will include tests related to EMV chip cards, mobile payments and biometric authentication. The security team will be responsible for taking the tech and determining how it can be enhanced to better protect consumers, merchants and financial institutions by preventing fraud from occurring across various payment options.

“Every day, they are tasked with uncovering potential threats and problems most people don’t even know exist. To aid in these efforts, the team fires lasers at payment cards, normally used in deep astronomy, and uses X-ray machines to analyze gadgets used by hackers, in addition to other activities,” MasterCard explained in its news release about the lab.

Overall, MasterCard’s goal with the lab is to keep up with the rapid pace of technological innovation, especially as it relates to digital payment security. The lab is designed to work with groups — such as the Security Emerging Payments — to help apply its “multi-layered approach to address security risks.” By expanding its lab, MasterCard hopes to take a joint approach to solving fraud issues by determining which tolls can be best applied to halt security threats.