IMGCAP(1)]
Details in the federal grand-jury indictment of four members of an international fraud ring accused of hacking into RBS WorldPay Inc.'s computer network (CardLine, 11/11) could help increase security at other payment-industry companies, contends one analyst. "Anything that is made available to the industry" will help secure other businesses, says Kate Monahan, an analyst at Aite Group LLC, a Boston-based consulting firm. Although any data breach is damaging for a business, making an effort to strengthen the industry against fraud by sharing indictment and investigation details is a positive outcome of the fraud for RBS WorldPay, she says. "Criminals keep getting more sophisticated and smarter. They are on top of [the latest] technology," which means payments companies must keep their security systems up to date, says Monahan. The four defendants allegedly accessed payroll debit card account and personal identification numbers in RBS WorldPay's system. They then allegedly created and used fraudulent payroll debit cards to withdraw more than $9 million in less than 12 hours from more than 2,100 ATMs in at least 280 cities worldwide, according to the indictment filed Nov. 10. RBS WorldPay disclosed in December that hackers had compromised the personal information of potentially 1.5 million prepaid cardholders and the Social Security numbers of 1.1 million individuals (CardLine, 12/29/08).
