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Data Security: Hannaford School of Hard Knocks |
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News of stolen or compromised consumer data seems to break so often, it’s easy to overlook the implications on the electronic payments industry. Yet the Hannaford case stands out from others because the Scarborough, Maine-based supermarket chain’s breach appears to represent a new line of attack: the first large-scale piracy of card data while the information was in transit. And, more important to payments professionals, this theft of up to 4.2 million credit and debit card numbers marks the first time a PCI-compliant company was compromised.
“Thieves commonly pilfer payment card data sitting in databases maintained by merchants or card processors because it’s low-hanging fruit,” says Neil Weicher, president of NetLib, a database encryption software developer in Stamford, Connecticut. “It takes a high level of technical skill to write programs that can intercept data in transit.”
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