I'm trying to figure out what is the best security solution to deploy for using POS terminals over the Internet. I have had several people tell me about different options to secure the trasnaction, the first is to encrypt the track 2 data at the terminal and decrypt it on the host using a 3DES algorithm and the other method is to build an SSL client to reside inside the POS.

Each method has it advantage and disadvantages:

3DES
Advantages
- Fast as there is no key to exchange to start the transaction

Disadvantage
- Only part of message encypted

SSL
Advantages
- The Whole message is encrypted
- _base_d on http/s or socket

Disadvantge
- Slow, as SSL requires the security key to be exchange before a transaction is sent
- SSL complex to configure

I want to hear from someone that gone through this and could let me know what they learnt fromt here experience.

Bye