By now, we’ve seen enough large-scale Point of Sale (POS) credit card thefts that patterns are beginning to emerge. Some companies follow the general arc of the narrative better than others and deserve credit for doing so, but in the end, the story is about the same.
That’s certainly the case with Jason’s Deli. Recently, they discovered RAM-scraping malware on a number of their POS terminals. This has happened at a total of 164 of their locations, scattered across 14 states.
During the seven-month period before the malware was discovered, the company estimates that the credit card payment information of some two million customers was stolen. The data included credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates, the cardholder’s service and verification codes, and the cardholder’s name.
As is the case with most of these incidents, the company immediately contacted law enforcement and hired a third-party firm to assist with the forensic investigation, which is still ongoing.
Jason’s Deli’s handling of the aftermath of the incident has been well above average. However, the bottom line is that unless companies start paying increasing attention to data security, issues like these are going to continue to occur.
As a general rule, hackers prefer to go after the low-hanging fruit. There’s simply more money in attacking soft targets than hard ones. Your company doesn’t need bullet proof security in order to be safe from most hackers, it’s just got to be better than average. Although obviously, the better and more robust your digital security is, the safer you will be.
Unfortunately, this painfully obvious lesson seems to be falling on too many deaf ears. Until and unless that changes, we’ll continue reading about incidents like these. It’s costing business billions every year. Make sure your company isn’t next on the hackers’ hit list.
President & CEO
I hope you enjoyed this article. My mission is to take your stress away from dealing with IT problems. Call (252) 565-1235 or send me a message at our contact us page if you have a question, comment or want help.
It’s official, the first macOS malware of 2018 is here. Discovered by an independent security researcher and dubbed “OSX/MaMi,” the code is functionally similar to DNSChanger malware.
The ThreatMetrix Cybercrime Report 2017 is out, and is a troubling read for anyone who has anything to do with data security. As a fraud prevention company protecting nearly a billion and a half users around the world, they’re uniquely positioned to know, and their insights on the threat landscape is invaluable.
Intel’s year isn’t getting off to a very good start. Just after the discovery of a pair of critical vulnerabilities that have been in their chipsets for more than a decade comes the discovery of yet another serious flaw that could impact millions of laptops around the world.
Normally, Google’s robust series of checks and audits are pretty good at catching malicious code and preventing it from making its way to the Play Store. Sometimes, however, something slips through anyway despite the company’s best efforts. This latest one is particularly bad.
