Just yesterday we were informed of a major security breach involving Heartland Payment Systems of Princeton, N.J. – the nation’s largest credit card processing company. The company announced just last week that it had discovered a security breach on its computer systems in 2008. The breach occurred between an outside party who broke into the company’s server and “sniffed out” credit card numbers as they passed through. Heartland is not revealing how many customers were affected by this breach of security, though some estimates claim information from 100 million customers may have been exposed.

Heartland’s website offers a letter from the company’s chairman and CEO stating that they have coordinated with the Secret Service and the U.S. Department of Justice in an attempt to get to the bottom of this massive, possibly record-breaking breach.

In other news, the federal government’s primary website for job postings was infiltrated by hackers this week. The site, USAJOBS.com, reported that some user’s IDs, passwords, email addresses, names, phone numbers and some basic demographic data were stolen. The government hired an outside contractor to as an Internet Service Provider and maintained the site through Monster, the popular public-sector job listing web site. Both sites have acknowledged the breach.

These numerous, recent security breaches bring to light the need for Enterprise Risk Management in businesses of every sector – big or small, public or private. ERM implementation is key to keeping a business safe and security-breach-free.

Emily Holbrook
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