Heartland Breach Puts Your Data at Risk

Heartland Payment Systems has disclosed that intruders hacked into the computers it uses to process 100 million payment card transactions per month for 175,000 merchants.

Heartland's president and CFO, said in a USA TODAY interview that the intruders had access to Heartland's system for "longer than weeks" in late 2008. The number of victims is unknown. "We just don't have the information right now," Baldwin said.

Tech security experts said the breach could set a record. Retail giant TJX lost 94 million customer records to hackers in 2007. With more than 100 million transactions per month, they could discover that several months' worth of transactions were captured, says Michael Maloof, chief technology officer at TriGeo Network Security.

Heartland processes card payments for restaurants, retailers and other merchants. It discovered the hack last week after Visa and MasterCard notified it of suspicious transactions stemming from accounts linked to its systems. Investigators then found the data-stealing program planted by the thieves.