Ottawa (ECN) - Heartland Payment Systems is a company that processes payment transactions for 175,000 merchants with over 100 million transactions. On Tuesday, the company said that hackers had hacked into their system that processes these payments.
The President and CFO of Heartland, Robert Baldwin, said that the people who hacked into their system had access to the information for weeks before they were found out. They do not know just yet how many people have become victims of this hacking.
"Our discussions with the Secret Service and Department of Justice give us a pretty good indication that this is part of a group that appears to have done security breaches at other financial institutions," said Baldwin. "This is a very sophisticated attack." Once it sorts out the matter, Heartland plans to notify each victim whose data were stolen to comply with data-loss disclosure laws in more than 30 states, Baldwin said in an interview with USA Today.
This hacking may have actually set a record for most records captured by hackers. The other company in 2007 that had 94 million records stolen by hackers was TJX. The Chief Technology Officer at TriGeo Network Security said that Heartland may actually find out that many months of transactions were stolen.
Last weeks is when the data that steals this information was found in the Heartland system. It was discovered that Visa and Mastercard credit cards were being used suspiciously when the credit card companies notified Heartland of the suspicious activities that were coming from the transactions associated with their processing system.
The company is currently talking with the Secret Service and Department of Justice and have found out that this hacking is part of a group that has hacked into other financial institutions also. Once the information is collected and Heartland finds out which of their customers information was stolen they will begin the notification process as outlined by laws that are in more then 30 states.
Once the system is fully restored the cost could actually be more then any fines or penalties the company may incur from the incident. This hacking took place during a time that is being reported as more credit card payment numbers being stolen. Hackers are known to test payment card transaction numbers to make sure that they are valid and working in chat rooms. An increase of 20% has been shown in year over year payments through credit cards by CardCops.
There are banks that have been affected by these hacking's also. One bank in Kentucky has started to send out replacement debit cards to their customers. CardCops say that the payment card numbers are coming from a processor or some other sources that have access to a large amount of payment card numbers.
It is always a good idea to make sure that any credit card payments that are made online are done through a secure network, as this makes the process of hacking a little more difficult and will help safeguard your information better.
