Wendy's delving deep into reports of a possible breach of credit card data used at its outlets. The fast-food giant began investigations as soon as it learned about a pattern of fraudulent activities on the credit cards right after they were used at a Wendy's outlet.
The company first received the news from its payment industry sources who noted the tell-tale signs of a possible breach and immediately warned the burger seller. Wendy's has now hired a security firm to probe into this matter.
As per KrebsOnSecurity, Bob Bertini, spokesperson for the Ohio-based outlet, said, "We have received this month from our payment industry contacts reports of unusual activity involving payment cards at some of our restaurant locations. Reports indicate that fraudulent charges may have occurred elsewhere after the cards were legitimately used at some of our restaurants. We've hired a cybersecurity firm and launched a comprehensive and active investigation that's underway to try to determine the facts."
The company is not sure exactly when the fraudulent activities took hold of the unsuspecting cardholders or to what extent the damages have been done. All they could do was to take immediate action to curb the matter. "We began investigating immediately, and the period of time we're looking at the incidents is late last year," said Bertini, according to International Business Times. "We know it's [affecting] some restaurants, but it's not appropriate just yet to speculate on anything in terms of scope."
The initial reports of the breach had seemed to indicate the Midwest, but lately the pattern was also traced to the East Coast of the US. Wendy's has some 6500 restaurants worldwide which include both company-owned and franchised outlets. Most of the US operations are reportedly franchises.
The fast-food chain mentioned that they came to know about the incident late last year, as represented by The Hill, but were unable to provide any concrete information regarding the findings of the investigation. "Until this investigation is completed, it is difficult to determine with certainty the nature or scope of any potential incident," the company explained.
Such hackings have become a serious issue over the years. Last year, Target had to implement new security policies after 42 million customers' debit and credit card information were stolen. The company had to pay up $10 million to settle the loss that occurred in 2013. Hopefully, data breach for Wendy's customers would not have spread to such an extent due to possible early detection.
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