Offline Security breach at Sam's Club exposes credit card data of Gas Buyers

[mandy]

Sam's Club, a division of Wal-Mart Stores Inc., is investigating a security breach that has exposed credit card data belonging to an unspecified number of customers who purchased gas at the wholesaler's stations between Sept. 21 and Oct. 2.

...the Bentonville, Ark.-based company said it was alerted to the problem by credit card issuers who reported that customers were complaining of fraudulent charges on their statements.

..such incidents are a test of how far Visa and Mastercard are willing to go to enforce the penalties associated with non-compliance -- particularly when dealing with large merchants...

"This opens up some questions on how objectively they will deal with this issue," the analyst said. "Will they pay favorable attention to large retailers like Wal-Mart but be willing in a split second to cut off the mom-and-pop liquor store" that suffers a similar security breach?

full article: http://www.computerworld.com/securitytop...rce=NLT_AM&nid=107014

[amy]

..such incidents are a test of how far Visa and Mastercard are willing to go to enforce the penalties associated with non-compliance -- particularly when dealing with large merchants...

"This opens up some questions on how objectively they will deal with this issue," the analyst said. "Will they pay favorable attention to large retailers like Wal-Mart but be willing in a split second to cut off the mom-and-pop liquor store" that suffers a similar security breach?

Yes Wal-Mart will get special treatment.  Enforcement has never been equal.