by Joseph Kenny | 02/18/09

For those who buy online or use credit cards to make payments of any kind, security is one of the foremost concerns. In fact, recent surveys have indicated that the fear of identity theft is one of the biggest issues affecting consumer trust in corporations. For this reason, it was all the more shocking this week when Heartland Payment Processing Systems announced that their database had been compromised.

For those not in the know, Heartland Payment Processing Systems is a corporation dedicated to acting as the intermediary between credit card-using consumers and merchants across the world. If you think of the small machines that you run your card through any time you make a transaction - those are the product of groups like Heartland, who provide a level of escrow security for lenders in exchange for a small fee per transaction.

While we usually don't think much of this, the fact remains that such groups are in fact privy to a great deal of private customer information, and as such, when they are compromised, it can represent the compromising of the information of every person who has ever used a terminal owned by that group!

Heartland Payment Processing Systems in particular is linked with more than 200,000 merchants and so this declaration of compromise on their part was particularly worrisome. It does seem, however, that they've done what they can to assuage the situation as much as possible.

Security specialists in the organization have created a list of all cards that could have potentially been compromised and contacted the owners of those accounts with information on how to protect themselves. Even if it seems that little damage has been done this time, however, this should serve as an eye-opening experience for borrowers across the country.

As the credit situation gets ever more desperate, borrowers and lenders alike must be on their guard against potential avenues of exploitation.