Posted by By Tayo Ajakaye with agency reports on
The security breach which recently hit one of Mastercard International's processor in Arizona, USA may not affect the Nigerian customers afterall though about 40 million card holders worldwide were exposed to fraud.
The security breach which recently hit one of Mastercard International's processor in Arizona, USA may not affect the Nigerian customers afterall though about 40 million card holders worldwide were exposed to fraud.
Speaking to THISDAY yesterday, the CEO of Cards Technology Limited, the company which brought MasterCard to Nigeria, Mr. Ayo Arise, said the incident in US has no impact on Nigerian holders of MasterCard.
According to him, the effect would be limited to those cards issued by the card processor, CardSystems Solutions, a third-party processor of payment card data used by MasterCard and other branded credit cards.
Arise said the security breach might have gone as far as affecting people in Japan and Hong Kong, because those places are world trading centres which is not the case with Nigeria.
Commenting on the security placed on data issued in Nigeria, he said, ‘the way we guard our database here, it cannot happen."
He pointed out that the Arizona incident occurred because the company at the centre of the breach failed to keep to procedures. If the processes were undertaken according to the rules, Arise said such incidents would not happen.
He however assured that immediately the breach was discovered, the cards were deemed to have been compromised and taken out of the system. As a result, no one would be able to use the information on the cards.
Mastercard International had announced that a security breach at one of its processors may have exposed more than 40 million customers to fraud.
Since the news broke, there had been anxiety among some Nigerian customers of Mastercard Nigeria who already has the card processed internationally or those just recently issued by licencedNigerian banks.
Standard Trust Bank (STB) only last week joined Ecobank in issuing Mastercard. The number of Nigerian banks that would issue the cards is expected to rise to more than a dozen before the close of the year.
The incident in the United States on Monday was the latest and largest in a series of security breaches of customer data that open up the possibility of identity theft. One group monitoring such breaches said 10 million US consumers may have been affected this year before the latest incident was discovered.
MasterCard said its security experts identified that the breach occurred at Arizona-based CardSystems Solutions,
MasterCard said the breach occurred when a person it called "an unauthorized individual" was able to infiltrate the network.
The credit card firm said the breach "potentially exposed more than 40 million cards of all brands to fraud, of which approximately 13.9 million are MasterCard-branded cards."
It said it was notifying participating banks and customers about the breach and that through the use of its fraud-fighting tools that proactively monitor for fraud, it was able to identify the processor that was breached.
"Working with all parties, including issuing banks, acquiring banks, the processor and law enforcement, MasterCard immediately launched an investigation into the breach, and worked with CardSystems to remediate the security vulnerabilities in the processor's systems."
By yesterday (Tuesday) morning, the effect has spread to Asian card holders in Japan and Hong Kong.
Agency reports the US government was under intense pressure to intervene after an Arizona-based CardSystems, Solutions, admitted it had retained information on Visa and MasterCard customers improperly.
Some 22 million affected customers are Visa holders and nearly 14 million are with MasterCard, according to company figures. American Express and Discover holders were also hit, but in far smaller numbers.
CardSystems chief, John Perry was reported to have told the New York Times that information on 40 million customers had been compromised, and that data on about 200,000 had actually been stolen.
He said the data had been retained by his company for research purposes even after transactions were completed, contrary to rules set by Visa and MasterCard.
"We should not have been doing that," he said. But with regard to the sensitive data, "we no longer store it on files", he was also quoted as saying.
MasterCard and Visa said CardSystems had flouted their security strictures, but played down the risk to consumers.
Visa International spokeswoman, Farnaz Khadem was also quoted as saying, "We work very hard to ensure that account numbers are kept as securely as possible. But when theft does occur, there are multiple systems in place to ensure that fraud does not take place."
In Australia, about 50,000 Mastercard and another 77,000 Visa card holders are believed to have been at risk, ABC radio reported Tuesday.
However, the banks issuing the cards said most of those affected have already been issued with replacements after irregular transactions were picked up as early as last December.