Another day, another 100 million credit cards compromised
January 20, 2009 (Venture Beat)
Heartland Payment Services, one of the largest credit and debit processing companies in the U.S., announced recently that hackers had compromised over 100 million credit card accounts last year. This might be the largest data breach of this kind in history.
The credit card data were stolen from the company's networks by unknown cyberthieves who apparently planted malicious software onto its computers. The worst part is that Heartland Payment Services only learned about the breach after it had received warnings from Mastercard and Visa.
The company's president and CFO said that this could be part of a "widespread global cyberfraud operation" and that the had no estimates on the number of cards stolen.
In 2007, the operator of TJ Maxx stores (TJX) had data associated with over 45 million cards stolen through a security breach... which reinforces the notion that your personal identity is vulnerable in the hands of others.
YOUnite's patented technology offers a unique solution to the ongoing and costly problem of identity fraud through the notion of "distributed sharing of personal identity attributes". By applying YOUnite's patented technology to this situation, for example, the user would be able to maintain their own credit card information on their own personal devices and then selectively share that information with those of their choosing. Other third party companies would not be required to store your data on their networks; therefore dramatically reducing the possibility of identity fraud as a result of data security breaches.
For more information, please read our Use Cases report titled, "YOUnite Enterprise Use Cases for the Credit Card Industry" located in the Resources section of our website.