Latest Blog Posts
Heartland Regains PCI Compliant Status
May 03, 2009 Added by:Anthony M. Freed
Heartland’s removal from the list of compliant payment processors had followed revelations that the company had suffered what may have been the largest data breach of payment card information to date, although details of the incident have not been made available due to ongoing investigations...
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Payment Card Industry Swallows Its Own Tail
April 01, 2009 Added by:Anthony M. Freed
The greatest threat to the survival of PCI DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard) may not be the ever-evolving tactics of the criminal hackers, but instead the dysfunctional nature of the relationships between the very parties the standards are meant to serve...
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Visa Puts Heartland on Probation Over Breach
March 13, 2009 Added by:Anthony M. Freed
HPS is now in a probationary period, during which it is subject to a number of risk conditions including more stringent security assessments, monitoring and reporting. Subject to these conditions, Heartland will continue to serve as a processor in the Visa system...
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Marine One Breach Has Winners and Losers
March 01, 2009 Added by:Anthony M. Freed
Billions of dollars are spent on security every year, and it can be trumped by one lapse in judgment. That is a tremendous amount of resources committed to security just to have it undermined by the whim of one individual, and it underscores the precariousness of secure systems...
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Heartland CEO Now Under SEC Investigation
February 26, 2009 Added by:Anthony M. Freed
The investigation may relate to stock trades made by Heartland CEO Robert Carr after Visa notified Heartland of suspicious activity on Oct. 28, 2008. According to insider trade filings, Carr sold just under US$8 million worth of stock between Oct. 29 and the day the breach was disclosed...
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Heartland Update: Reps Respond to Questions
February 01, 2009 Added by:Anthony M. Freed
Heartland first learned of a potential problem from the card associations on October 28th of last year, well after the announcement of this 10b5-1 plan. Heartland categorically denies that Mr. Carr was aware of a potential security breach at the time he adopted his trading plan...
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Heartland Breach Bad As Tylenol Poisonings?
January 25, 2009 Added by:Anthony M. Freed
The company issued statements Friday (1/23) in an effort at damage control in which the CEO compares the potential industry-wide impact of the breach to none other than that of the Tylenol poisonings of some twenty-five years ago that nearly brought down the drug maker...
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U.S.Banks Vulnerable to Sabotage
December 19, 2008 Added by:Anthony M. Freed
Democratic U.S. Rep. James Langevin of Rhode Island, who chairs the homeland security subcommittee on cybersecurity, said: “We’re way behind where we need to be now.” Dire consequences of a successful attack could include failure of banking or national electrical systems, he said...