POS Data Breach Hits Arby’s

Point-of-sale data breaches continue to be an ongoing problem for businesses of every size, and the latest discovered breach is no exception. Arby’s fast food chain appears to have been struck by a malware attack that infected its credit card payment system in multiple corporate-owned locations. At this time, no franchisee locations are believed to have been infected.

When the chain discovered the malware on its servers last month, they immediately notified law enforcement and brought in forensic tech experts to conduct an investigation. While the malware has been discovered, there’s no count yet of how many patrons’ records were compromised; however, the number is believed to already be more than 350,000.

There’s no such thing as a “good” data breach, but there are instances in which the stolen information is not as dangerous as others. In the case of a POS data breach, the compromised records should only include names and credit card or debit card numbers, and pertinent related account information. No Social Security numbers or birth dates, for example, would have been stolen.

So what are concerned citizens supposed to do now? The same thing they should be doing every day! But in cases like this one it’s especially important to monitor your accounts for any signs of unusual activity, and contact your bank as soon as you see anything strange. Your bank might wish to place a hold on your card or even to replace it entirely in order to avoid fraudulent charges on the part of the hackers, but some banks might consider that premature without further reason to believe that you were affected.

If your account was impacted by this breach, you will receive a notification letter from Arby’s with more information on how to protect yourself. If this situation turns out to meet the legal requirements for free credit monitoring, you may be offered that protection for one year at no cost to you.