Credit card processor CardSystems Solutions, which potentially exposed more than 40 million cards of all brands to fraud, is likely to close, because two of its main customers, Visa and American Express, has decided to cancel their business partnership with CardSystems. Company's CEO John Perry tells the US House of Representative that if two credit card giants don't reconsider, CardSystems will Р’В«be forced to permanently close its doorsР’В».
The incident put at a risk of ID theft more than 40 million cardholders. Approximately 13.9 million are MasterCard-branded cards. At the beginning of the investigation nearly 70,000 MasterCard account numbers were considered to be especially at risk because they were kept in a file exported from CardSystems' database. But then experts found two files with confidential data more. Thus the three files containing a total of 263,000 records for 239,000 account numbers were probably downloaded by criminals.
MasterCard gave CardSystems time until 31 August to prove that it complies with the firm's security requirements. However Visa and American Express cancel their partnership with CardSystems immediately.
Р’В«Confidential information leakage is the incident that can put an end to company's business. Data warehouse ChoicePoint paid a fantastic sum — $11.4 million — for the episode that affected 145,000 citizens. CardSystems Solutions is likely to pay with all its businessР’В», — commented Denis Zenkin, the Marketing Director of InfoWatch company.
Р’В«It's all the same if CardSystems is able to prove its compliance with MasterCard security requirements. Without Visa and MasterCard the processing company won't surviveР’В», — he added.
Source: vnunet.com
