Casino Gaming Cybersecurity

The casino gaming industry knows better than most that business depends upon trust. Futurex provides the most versatile and secure encryption solutions on the market, offering object signing, point-to-point encryption (P2PE), vaultless tokenization, key lifecycle management, and other cryptographic essentials to maintain the integrity of gaming machines and the trust of patrons. You can use these solutions to authenticate payouts, protect personally identifiable information (PII), secure Game to System (G2S) protocols, and prevent data breaches.

Challenges Facing the Casino Gaming Industry

Modern casinos must optimize the player experience while preventing security threats beyond dishonest play. High-value information flows through a casino like money: PII for rewards programs, payment card data from POS terminals, in-game currency, and the authentication of winnings.

Protecting this information requires an extensive infrastructure to handle diverse cryptographic functions with maximum security and minimum downtime. The Futurex scalable single-vendor solution enables casino gaming establishments to safeguard consumer trust and revenue.

Protect PII such as payment card data, names, and addresses
Secure G2S protocols to prevent manipulation
Authenticate payouts and jackpots
Guard against payment fraud
Prevent internal breaches

Solutions for the Casino Gaming Industry

Futurex supplies FIPS 140-2 Level 3-validated HSMs on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid model. Through Futurex HSMs, gaming establishments gain access to every cryptographic function needed to ensure the integrity of their operations.

Futurex HSMs have physical and logical controls to prevent both external and internal breaches. Deploying these solutions will reduce your organization’s PCI compliance scope while protecting patrons’ data and maintaining their trust.

Object signing authenticates payouts and closed-loop cards
P2PE protects cardholder data and reduces PCI compliance scope
Database encryption protects stored data from membership clubs
Vaultless tokenization protects cardholder data by replacing it with indecipherable strings
Private key storage in HSMs are subject to physical and logical security controls

PCI HSM

The Payment Card Industry Hardware Security Module dictates the secure design and deployment of HSMs to ensure their integrity. These cryptographic devices must meet a strict set of criteria satisfying physical and logical security requirements, including requirements for tamper detection and response, dual login, and separation of user roles.

Learn about our cryptographic architecture >

Object Signing

A public key infrastructure (PKI) allows you to create the root of trust: a certificate authority (CA). The CA can digitally sign objects with cryptographic signatures to validate data and devices. Devices on both the sending and receiving ends are authorized under a common certificate tree to share data, such as EGM configurations.

PKI & Certificate Authority >

G2S: Customizable Game Machines

Customizing electronic game machines (EGMs) makes the casino environment more interactive for the patron and can also improve the casino’s profitability.

Object signing and mutual authentication allow backroom servers to send remote updates to EGMs. This level of control protects game algorithms from fraud attempts, such as false-positive results. It maintains the integrity of the game operating system and the unique keys it contains, all within a FIPS 140-2 Level 3-validated HSM.

Object Signing

Game to System (G2S) communication protocols, developed by the Gaming Standards Association (GSA), allow casinos to securely enable communication between backroom servers and EGMs in the casino environment. This better caters to individual patrons.

Accomplish this communication by using a certificate authority (CA) to validate the sending and receiving devices, which prevents cybercriminals from tampering with software, firmware, or game parameters such as payout percentage.

Data Encryption

On the casino floor, one game captures a lot of attention: the slot machine. Futurex provides form factor HSMs that you can embed into individual EGMs. These can encrypt and decrypt traffic between the server and the machine, ensuring the authenticity of gaming software and guarding against modification by outside sources. For gaming machines that accept loyalty or player cards, it also encrypts sensitive cardholder data.

Securing Patrons

Casinos collect Personally Identifiable Information (PII) through player rewards clubs. This information provides marketing teams with valuable information. However, this data’s high value and large volume attract individuals seeking to commit data theft and fraud. Object signing provides the root of trust to secure the operation of EGMs and capture of data, while Point-to-Point Encryption (P2PE), database encryption, and tokenization protect submitted data.

For data in motion, HSMs enable private key storage for TLS encryption, a type of encryption commonly used to secure web traffic between a browser and a server. Storing TLS private keys inside an HSM provides greater security for the exchange of PII over the Internet. Additionally, processing TLS handshakes within a dedicated cryptographic module frees up processing power within the web server and provides tamper responsiveness, scalability, and secure storage for cryptographic keys.

Game to System Security

As hardware-based slot machines transition to the new standard of EGMs, system upgrades provide opportunities for huge increases in profitability and customization.

Game to Systems (G2S) communication protocols, developed by the Gaming Standards Association (GSA), factoring into this profitability. To maintain a given casino’s infrastructure and keep payout percentages from being manipulated by users, you must protect G2S protocols. G2S protocols enable casinos to cater environments to individual patrons, increasing both interactivity and overall profitability. In the United States, the Nevada Gaming Commission stipulates that a machine must be idle for four minutes before management can make any change to the game itself, denominations, or payout percentages.

You can control these factors securely, in real-time, with close to zero downtime through object signing and mutual authentication. Futurex offers this technology in a cryptographic environment, ensuring the validity of casino winnings and compliance with regulatory requirements. This protects both the slot machine manufacturer and the casino from outside threats.