Security Breach at Heartland Affects Florida Based Credit Union

A credit union based in Tampa, Florida (USA) has informed its 56,000 members that a security breach at HPY (Heartland Payment Systems) back in January this year (2009) exposed their Visa cards to fraud.

An enormous data breach at the Heartland Payment Systems during January 2009 has resulted in a large number of consumers becoming vulnerable to ID theft.

HPY that processes almost 100 Million credit cards transactions every month reports that attackers hacked into the financial data of consumers, including payment card numbers along with expiration dates. Heartland processes credit card transactions for more than 250,000 businesses across the USA, the payments processor reports.

It was only during May end 2009 that Suncoast Schools Federal Credit Union discovered that its customers were subject to the potential risk from the breach at Heartland Payment Systems that exposed customer account information in connection with several millions of transactions on debit and credit cards.

Consequently, new payment cards are being issued to all those consumers who have been victims of the hack. Actually, the fraud affected around 1,000 consumers as of the 3rd week of June 2009, reports Senior Vice President of Member Service Operations Melva McKay-Bass for Suncoast.

Following the receipt of reports from card companies regarding the glitch, Heartland instantly started a forensic examination. However, as per early findings, the glitch did not originate from Heartland's system, according to the company's spokesperson though later during January 2009, the forensic investigators were able to locate a malicious software.

Meanwhile, Heartland's President commented that it would be too early to call the breach the biggest ever security infringement of customer data. Further, the company is considering of informing its affected members ones the exact number is determined.

In the background of these new occurrences, security experts are alerting about the significance of cautiously examining the statements of monthly cards.

Still, media has been speculating that the Heartland breach could be regarded as a large breach, save as the biggest-ever. Previously, TJX, a retail company, had set the record when credit and debit card numbers of approximately 45 Million customers had been filched.

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» SPAMfighter News - 7/6/2009