Security ... think about it!
Merchant acquirer Heartland Payment Systems Inc.’s sales force will begin selling the company’s new end-to-end encryption system in the second quarter following testing that began last June, the company says. Heartland also says several terminal manufacturers are integrating the technological protocols of its system, which was developed by Voltage Security Inc., into their own hardware. Heartland already was working on enhancing security but greatly accelerated the effort after announcing a major breach of its processing system for small and medium-sized merchants in early 2009, a breach a federal prosecutor later said compromised 130 million debit and credit cards. The computer hacker who led the attack, Albert Gonzalez of Miami, was sentenced to 20 years in prison March 25 for his role in the TJX Cos. and some other data breaches, and was scheduled to be sentenced March 26 for the Heartland breach.