COMMENTS
As far as my experience in concerned , i feel wireless data must be encrypted. Data hacking is much easier when it is over the air. The key lenghth is also important. Till now i feel POS systems are using very minimal level of security which will be dangerous very soon.
Clearly some of past and recent data breaches were caused by basic social engineering or a lack of basic host based security monitoring. Where we see software protection advantages is in giving POS software providers and other vendors a capability to protect application integrity independent of where software is deployed. This would not stop a hacker with administrator privileges installing a packet sniffing software, but would prevent malware or remote attempts to hook or tamper with the application at runtime. This is a real threat vector today, but unfortunately hackers have much simpler methods at their disposal as shown Dave & Buster's scenario, so a layered approach makes a lot of sense.
Vic DeMarines
V.i. Labs
We all agree that having a good seatbelt and bad brakes is not a viable approach to security. One does not need to conjure impossible solutions, yet a layered approach can certainly be very effective. If you lockdown the endpoint, make sure you use SSL and a protected application, even an educated intruder with admin privileges will find it extremely hard to steal the data.