CEO of hacked HPS reports on the investigation results and offers reimbursement

Robert O. Carr, CEO of Heartland Payment Systems that has recently reported the breach has announced that more than 400 merchants were added to its client base in the past few days. - exceeding results for the same period from last year.

"Despite the headwinds of the economy and attacks by some of our competitors, we have installed new merchants, new payroll clients and new check management clients since our disclosure of the breach on Tuesday morning. Our record of candor, fair dealing, no arbitrary rate increases since our formation almost 12 years ago and superior customer service is highly valued,” said Robert O. Carr. 

He also said that HPS has called on the owners of more than 150,000 business locations those past three days to help them understand the breach and what meant to them. No confidential merchant data, Social Security numbers, unencrypted personal identification numbers (PIN), addresses or telephone numbers were retrieved in what is believed to be a global cyber-fraud operation. Heartland does not yet know how many card numbers were obtained.

cardholders will be reimbursed for the fraudulent purchases and will not hold financially responsible

Company assured that consumers will know if their card account numbers have been used by reviewing their monthly statements. Cardholders should report suspicious activity to their issuing banks (the bank that issued the card, not the card brand). If unauthorized use is confirmed, cardholders will be reimbursed for the fraudulent purchases and will not hold financially responsible, company statement says. 

Over the past few days, Carr has been talking to many industry leaders about working together to fight the cyber criminals who victimized Heartland and continue to jeopardize companies, consumers and data worldwide. "Up to this point, there has been no information sharing, thus empowering cyber criminals to use the same or slightly modified techniques over and over again. I believe that had we known the details about previous intrusions, we might have found and prevented the problem we learned of last week," said Carr.