Philadelphia Personal Injury Lawyer - Class Action

Security Breach at Heartland

Jamie Sheller — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:43:22 GMT

Possibly the biggest security breach ever has happened with Heartland Payment Systems. Heartland processes payroll and credit card payments for more than 250,000 businesses. According to Heartland, it just found out about the data breach this year, even though the breach occurred last year. Heartland says that upon learning of the security breach, it immediately contacted law enforcement and credit card companies. The breach was discovered after Heartland hired forensic auditors to investigate suspicious activity surrounding processed card transactions. This security breach may have affected nearly 100 million accounts and the data of account holders. Prior to this breach with Heartland, the largest security breach involved 45.7 million credit and debit card members by TJX, which owns TJ Maxx and Marshalls. A class action lawsuit involving that security breach was recently settled.

If you have received notice of this data breach from Heartland or your card company, or you believe that you have been affected by this breach, contact J. L. Sheller at Sheller, P.C. to discuss your potential legal rights. Sheller has filed a class action lawsuit involving the Heartland security breach. Sheller lawyers work to protect the rights of individuals in a variety of legal matters, from consumer fraud to civil rights and product liability. Sheller, P.C. has extensive experience successfully representing plaintiffs in class action litigation. If you believe that you were affected by the security breach at Heartland, contact us to investigate your legal rights and possible inclusion in the class action lawsuit that we have filed.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Jamie Sheller

4.2 Million Credit & Debit Card Numbers Stolen from Hannaford

Shannon Weidemann — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 16:55:39 GMT

The Hannaford Bros. Co. grocery store chain announced last week that the credit and debit card numbers of 4.2 Million customers had been stolen. The breach in security affected transactions at all of their stores along the east coast, as well as the Sweetbay grocery store chain in Florida.

Normally credit card and debit card numbers are stolen from a database that has been breached by hackers, in this instance though the numbers were obtained while the data was being transmitted to the bank for authorization. It may be the first credit card theft of this kind.

The credit card and debit card numbers were stolen between December 7, 2007 and March 10. No customer names and addresses were obtained. There have been 1,800 cases of fraud reported. The card numbers have been used around the world.

Payment Card Industry sets security standards for companies that handle credit card and debit card data. It is a coalition set up by credit card companies. PCI has found Hannaford to be in compliance with their security standards when an external audit was performed last month.

David Navetta, president of InfoSecCompliance LLC, a Denver law firm that concentrates on computer security and regulatory compliance, argues that Hannaford and its assessor may have been tripped up by ambiguity in the PCI standards about when companies must encrypt payment data to cloak it from outsiders.
In particular, the standards require companies to encrypt data that travels over computer networks "that are easy and common for a hacker to intercept." Whether certain internal networks are "easy and common" to crack is a matter of judgment, so Navetta believes Hannaford may have erroneously felt safe leaving data unencrypted in a spot that turned out to be vulnerable.

It is unknown what encryption method, if any, that Hannaford uses while the data is being transmitted. Data encryption can slow down transactions at the register and may not be used by all businesses.

Hannaford is still investigating how and why the security breach happened. Due to the credit card and debit card fraud the U.S. Secret Service is involved in the investigation. The company has stated they do not keep customer information in a database.

Two class action lawsuits against Hannaford have been filed on behalf of the card holders involved. The lawsuit "charges the company with negligence and breach of implied contract and seeks to recover any damages that might be caused to consumers as a result of the breach."

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Shannon Weidemann

Humana Settles Class-Action Suit

Staff Writer — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 16:20:39 GMT

Humana settled a class-action suit filed by more than 700,000 doctors who claimed the company, along with several other insurers, was delaying payments as well as shortchanging the doctors when they did pay. Humana was the sixth of ten companies to settle, agreeing to pay up to $58 million - $40 million to the doctors and $18 million in legal fees. The Louisville Courier-Journal provides more details along with reactions from the plaintiffs' attorney and doctors who were not part of the suit.

Originally posted at InjuryBoard by Staff Writer