Heartland faces first lawsuit against data loss

Fewdays back, we had posted an article title “Network Breach in Credit card processors warns : Heartland”.

“Credit and debit card transaction processing company  Heartland Payment System warned that it had found evidence of a network breach that had compromised consumers’ credit-card numbers.“

Heartland, an credit and debit card transactions processing company has to face lawsuit against massive data loss that happened to its client Chimicles & Tikellis LLP.

Chimicles & Tikellis LLP, a pennsylvania law firm filed the first lawsuit lastweek against payment processor Heartland payment systems claiming that the heartland failed to protect sensitive data.

Chimicles claims that, because Heartland did not know of the breach until it was notified of credit-card fraud by Visa and Mastercard, the the company had not implemented all the controls required by the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Data Security Standard.

“Possibly millions of consumers across the United States have had their Sensitive Financial Information compromised, have had their privacy rights violated, have experienced unauthorized credit card charges, have been exposed to the risk of fraud and identity theft, and have otherwise suffered damages,” the lawsuit claims.

Last week Heartland responded to the issue,  “I sincerely regret any inconvenience caused by the data breach that occurred within our processing system during 2008,” Robert Carr, chairman and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems, said in a statement.