Restaurant chain P.F. Chang’s China Bistro is investigating reports that it was a target of a security breach that may have led to the theft of information from thousands of consumer credit and debit cards.
The potential compromise, which has not been confirmed by the restaurant chain, was first reported by independent journalist Brian Krebs, who operates the security news blog KrebsOnSecurity. Krebs posted that thousands of recently stolen credit and debit cards went up for sale on Rescator, an underground e-Commerce marketplace that was previously used to sell payment data after the Target data breach.
“P.F. Chang’s takes these matters very seriously and is currently investigating the situation, working with the authorities to learn more,” said Julie Elkinton, Chief Brand Officer at P.F. Chang’s, in an e-mailed statement to Bloomberg News.
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Data security breaches have become an a major point of concern for merchants ever since Target reported in December that hackers had stolen data from up to 40 million credit cards of shoppers who visited the stores during the holiday season. In the following months, retailers Neiman Marcus, Michaels and Sally’s Beauty Supply revealed they had experienced data breaches of their own.
“There is continued focus from the hacker community on American merchants as we are still the softest target to exploit and monetize,” said Seth Ruden, Senior Fraud Consultant at payment processing company ACI Worldwide. “Until we take the necessary efforts to get control around the management of payment card data in the merchant channel through technologies like EMV and tokenization, we will continue to be impacted. The best defense against these attacks is through the development of our own networks and communities: information sharing and internal discussion of threats/actors to develop coordinated strategies.”
