Monday 2 April 2012

Global Payments Inc. Breached: How Many Credit Card Numbers (says 1.5 Million) This Time?

NOTE: This is a _very_ opinionated post.

When are our government representatives going to stand up for us when it comes to data breaches that impact our day to day lives?!?

We can’t seem to embed the Bloomberg video at the following URL:

It is a good discussion of the unknown status around the hacking of payment processor Global Payments Inc.

We had our issues around the breach of Heartland Payment Systems (blog Breach category) given the way the whole thing played out. We were directly impacted by that particular breach.

Whether or not we are impacted by this current breach has yet to be seen but rest assured that we will be watching our CC online statements daily, as we regularly do anyway, for any fraudulent activities!

It is time to have legislation in place that does not allow breaches like this to fly under the radar or remain undisclosed as is the case here for _weeks_ after the breach. Our governments need to step up to protect their constituents.

It is _NOT_ up to the CEO of Global Payments Inc. to weigh things out with regards to breach disclosure.

Good on VISA for pulling their support of Global Payments Inc. Now, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, and others need to follow suit.

It is time for the credit card industry to start outright punishing payment processors for not having proper security elements in place to protect our credit card information.

Multi-Tier type authentication like AuthAnvil is not that expensive to implement. Training folks up and beyond the lowest common denominator is also a good step. That’s the cost of doing business in today’s hostile online environment.

And, no, there is NO excuse for a payment processor to not have our data protected using the best possible methods. Period.

Just ask the people that lose their life to trying to recover their identity, credit, and any other aspect of getting things straightened out after their credit card(s) and/or identity have been stolen.

Original Hat Tip: Susan Bradley

Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
Co-Author: SBS 2008 Blueprint Book

*Our original iMac was stolen (previous blog post). We now have a new MacBook Pro courtesy of Vlad Mazek, owner of OWN.

Windows Live Writer

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Its pretty much a given that there is no fool-proof security, you will get hacked at some point, however you will be judged by how you respond. GP in this case did poorly in that regard and I agree and applaud Visa for pulling out with them. I don't think throwing more technology will help, its the way CC business works, and that model needs to change industry wide. But that's a whole other discussion.