Yesterday, Marc Stewart of WSMV reported on how a number of Tennessee banks had been affected by the Heartland Payment Systems breach. Today, Todd Wallack of The Boston Globe has some data and figures on banks in Massachusetts affected by the Heartland Payment Systems breach.
Some of the figures may be a bit surprising to those who anticipated even larger numbers. Wallack reports:
For instance, Rockland Trust Co. told the state it was forced to reissue nearly 19,000 MasterCard debit cards and 64 Visa credit cards to customers this spring, while East Boston Savings Bank said it replaced the debit cards for as many as 7,600 customers. Salem Five Cents Savings Bank said the debit cards for 7,200 of its customers, mostly Massachusetts residents, were “compromised” by the breach and issued new cards to customers with active accounts earlier this year.
Many of the banks included in these two recent news stories do not appear on bankinfosecurity.com’s list, which had already identified over 625 financial institutions affected by the breach. Visa gave financial institutions until May 19 Visa to file claims for reimbursement for part of any losses. It would be nice if they released some numbers after that deadline, even some simple figures such as the number of institutions that filed claims based on the breach.
In the interim, reports of actual fraud as a result of the breach continue to be relatively sparse for a breach of this supposed magnitude, but given what happened in the aftermath of the RBS WorldPay breach, any statements about little fraud might be very premature. Hopefully, those financial institutions that decided to just “monitor” card numbers will not regret their decision.