A massive
data breach that exposed the credit card information for more than 1.5 million people will cost the company ultimately responsible for it tens of millions in damages.
Global Payments, which suffered the breach in March, will have to pay $84.4 million in damages, as well as some remediation expenses to Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover, the card issuers whose customers were affected by the incident, according to a report from the
Wall Street Journal. Originally, the company said the breach affected far fewer credit card holders.
Payment information for the victims that was exposed in the hacking attack included account details that could be used to create counterfeit cards, but no data related to personal information, such as names or Social Security numbers, the report said.
Ondrej Krehel, the chief information security officer for
Identity Theft 911, writes on his blog about how consumers can reduce their exposure in the wake of this type of data breach, and what organizations can do to help them protect themselves.
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