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Heartland Payments CEO says end-to-end encryption could prevent card, data breaches

January 29, 2009

Digital Transactions:After news of the Heartland Payments Systems breach — possibly the largest data breach on record to date — details about how much damage was actually caused is still unclear. One report suggests Heartland's breach-related legal liabilities could approach $98 million, an estimate a Heartland spokesperson dismisses as speculative. Heartland says the so-called "sniffer" program secretly planted on one of its payment-processing platforms was not being used when investigators found it about two weeks ago. "It was inactive," a spokesperson says. "I want to be specific to say it was inactive," he adds, clarifying that the hackers hadn't deliberately disabled or deactivated it. Now Heartland chief executive Robert Carr is calling for better industry cooperation and new operational procedures to prevent future data compromises — including industry-wide, end-to-end encryption to fully protect cardholder data.

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