Global Payments Inc -Security Breach Compromised 1.5 Million of Visa and MasterCard
Earlier in this year cyber criminals had breached the security system Global Payments Inc. a leader in payment processing services. During breach experts have estimated that more than 50,000 Visa and MasterCard information was stolen. And now after the investigation Global Payments says that no more than 1.5 million credit card numbers were harvested during the intrusion into its systems disclosed earlier this year. The incident only affects North American Visa and MasterCard customers. The Company has, however, provided a larger quantity of card numbers to industry brands to enable them to proactively monitor cardholder activity. The evidence continues to indicate that the potential card exportation was limited to Track 2 data.
This type of track data on the magnetic stripe of a credit card includes numerical data such as the card number and the expiry date but doesn't include information like the card owner's name.
Additionally, Global Payments says that it believes that not all of the nearly 1.5 million cards have been compromised. However, the payment processing company has notified credit card companies of all potentially affected numbers so that they can "proactively monitor cardholder activity"; Global Payments has previously said that it might pass on further card numbers for monitoring purposes. Paul R. Garcia, the Chairman and CEO of Global Payments, has apologised for the incident and said that his company is working diligently to conclude its investigations. At the end of its fiscal year in July, the company plans to present its shareholders with a final report on the incident. Once investigations are complete, the payment processing firm plans to reapply as a "PCI DSS Compliant Service Provider" with MasterCard and Visa: after the incident was made public, the credit card companies revoked Global Payments' certification.