This follow-up to a breach originally reported on PogoWasRight.org last year demonstrates how what might appear to be less than catastrophic data breaches can wipe out a small or medium-sized business.
William R. Wood reports on MLive.com:
The area’s two Spicy Pickle restaurants closed Monday, their owner saying that they were victims of the fallout from a credit-card theft that happened at one of the restaurants last fall.
Thieves hacked into the computers of the Spicy Pickle location at 3774 W. Centre Ave. between last September and November, gained access to the credit-card information of about 150 customers and made purchases using the information.
Spicy Pickle may have been one of the first businesses in Kalamazoo to be targeted by computer hackers.
“It hurt us so bad, you wouldn’t believe it,” Spicy Pickle co-owner Terry Henderson said of the effects the thefts had on customers, and the chilling effect it had on business. “It went on for weeks. We never recovered our sales levels. We never came close.