WASHINGTON — The federal government might be shut down, butVisa's semiannualGlobal Security Summit launched on time Wednesday morning in anauditorium at the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington.

More than 500 executives from financial institutions, securityfirms, payment networks and software firms have gathered in DC topreview the newest frontiers in developing secure means ofelectronic and card payments.

Also from Global Security Summit:
Tightening the Fraud Net
CardData Old Hat
PoliticoPessimism

Ellen Ritchey, Visa's Global Head of Enterprise Risk,outlined the challenges payment security executives face:

More than 200 million phishing emails are sent to consumers eachday, and 80,000 respond.

Big business data compromises involve a lot more data percompromise, but 98% of compromises come from small businesses.

At least 10% of American consumers have shared their socialsecurity numbers on a social media site.

To widespread groans and chuckles from the audience, Ritcheyshared examples of people who had sent pictures of their debitcards on twitter or put their card data on their Facebookpages.

“These are the challenges our industry faces,” Ritchey said.