Global Payment Systems Breach

On April 3, 2012 Forbes.com reported this article regarding the data breach of Global Payment Systems on March 30,2012.

Global Payments Data Breach Exposes Card Payments Vulnerability

Cardholders around the world received a shock late last week when Global Payments Inc. announced a breach in its card data processing system. ^[1] After all, the company is one of the biggest processors of Visa and Mastercard card transactions, and also processes a sizable number of transactions for Discover Financial and American Express.

But don’t worry too much if you are a debit or credit card user. The breach has only exposed a small fraction of the total cards in use. Even if you are among the unlucky few, remember that you wouldn’t be liable for any unauthorized transactions on your card. Of course, how the card companies handle this incident has raised concerns about the safety of card payment systems.

And so is your private information, if Global Payments is to be believed. Global Payments works as one of the intermediaries in card transaction, and is what actually authorizes a charge. It then merely passes on transaction details to card networks like Visa and MasterCard.

In a followup announcement, the card processor disclosed that the breach allowed hackers to gain less than 1.5 million card numbers. ^[1] While an alarming number, this is but a fraction of the nearly one billion cards in use in North America – the region affected by the incident.

That said, Global Payments maintains that while the information stolen can be used to create counterfeit cards, sensitive personal information including the name, address and SSN have not been compromised. And with the card providers already in the loop about cards affected, chances are you won’t need to do anything regarding this incident.

 1.Press Releases, Global Payments Security Update Website, Mar 30 2012

For the full article please visit forbes.com