Certegy Check Services reached an agreement with the Florida Attorney General's office this week to pay an estimated $1 million to settle charges related to a high-profile security breach in 2007.
Certegy, based in St. Petersburg, Fla., will pay to cover the costs of the state's investigation and fund Attorney General Bill McCollum's "Seniors vs. Crime" educational project. The financial services company also must "dramatically upgrade" its data security technology and processes after more than 5.9 million customer files were exposed.
The security breach involved former Certegy employee William Gary Sullivan stealing customers' personal data and trying to sell the information to data brokers and marketers. Certegy, an arm of Fidelity National Information Services, allegedly failed to provide adequate data for consumer records that were stolen by Sullivan, who then tried to sell the personal information to data brokers and marketers.
Sullivan is currently serving a 57-month sentence in federal prison for fraud.
