Record Breaking Credit Card Breach at Heartland Payment Systems

As a consumer, this is a little disheartening.

The Washington Post has reported that Heartland Payment Systems, a payment processor that services more than 250,000 businesses, has had more than 100 million transactions compromised via malicious software that was installed on its network; it will likely turn out to be the largest data breach ever reported. The 'good' news is that the criminals were only capturing credit card numbers, the names on the cards, and expiration dates—the info encoded onto the magnetic strip on the card. Because no addresses, SSNs or PINs were stolen, the prospect of full-blown identity theft is pretty small—which must explain why Heartland isn't offering any sort of credit monitoring package as compensation. Instead, their CFO says, We recognize and feel badly about the inconvenience this is going to cause consumers.

But it's even more alarming for me as someone who works in the e-commerce industry. I believe strongly that news like this should be disclosed and full and public investigations must be carried out to prevent these issues. However, for consumers this is a big blow to confidence in e-commerce in general. And that does not bode well for the small business in the long term.

Read more about this breach at The Consumerist.