U.S. retailers were the primary target of point-of-sale attacks last year, according to the Dell Security Annual Threat Report. The attacks have evolved since previous years, says John Gordineer, director of product marketing, Dell Security. "New trends included memory scraping and using encryption to avoid detection from firewalls."

The report found a surge in point-of-sale malware, increased malware traffic within encrypted (https) Web protocols, as well as twice the number of attacks on supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems over 2013. There was a 100-percent increase in attacks against SCADA systems.

"Everyone knows the threats are real and the consequences are dire, so we can no longer blame lack of awareness for the attacks that succeed," said Patrick Sweeney, executive director, Dell Security. "Hacks and attacks continue to occur, not because companies aren't taking security measures, but because they aren't taking the right ones."

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