Secuobs.com : 2012-07-27 15:35:14 - SecurityTube.Net - Global Payments Inc GPN said Thursday a security breach that exposed potentially millions of consumers' payment cards to fraudsters will cost it 844 million The Atlanta-based company, which processes card transactions for banks and merchants, recorded a pre-tax charge for the amount, equal to 68 cents of diluted per-share earnings, in the fiscal fourth quarter The amount reflects expected charges from payment networks such as Visa Inc V and MasterCard Inc MA and expenses related to its investigation and remediation of the matter We recently completed our data intrusion investigation, and we are focused on executing the remediation plan, Chairman and Chief Executive Paul Garcia said in a statement The company disclosed the breach in late March, saying it believed no more than 15 million card numbers were exported or taken from its processing network Last month, though, it said it supplied a larger number of card numbers to the payment networks for monitoring Global Payments also said at the time that the personal information of merchants may have been accessed through its servers The information was primarily from small merchants who had applied to be a customer of the company, which requires prospective clients to undergo a credit check The initial breach affected cards from Visa, MasterCard, American Express Co AXP and Discover Financial Services DFS Information accessed included card numbers and other details that can be used to create counterfeit cards but didn't contain cardholder names, addresses or Social Security numbers Federal investigators, including the Secret Service, were looking into the matter Visa and MasterCard also booted Global Payments from lists they maintain of approved third-party vendors that meet the card companies' security standards While this hasn't prevented Global Payments from processing transactions made with Visa and MasterCard cards, it can cause apprehension for merchants when deciding which company to hire for processing services Global Payments said it is working with a security assessor, which is conducting an independent review of its operations as part of the process to regain compliance with the card networks IMAGE
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