The California Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) has confirmed that an investigation has started to see whether they have suffered a data breach of its credit card processing services. The DMV has confirmed that none of their internal computer systems have been compromised.
Armando Botello who is a spokesman for the DMV confirmed that an investigation in currently underway after they were made aware that a possible data breach may have occurred.
Botello stated, “The Department of Motor Vehicles has been alerted by law enforcement authorities to a potential security issue within its credit card processing services.”
Botello added, “In its investigation, the department is performing a forensic review of its systems and seeking information regarding any potential breach from both the external vendor that processes the DMV’s credit card transactions and the credit card companies themselves.”
The potential breach has occurred as the DMV allow customers to pay by credit card at self-service terminals and in online transactions for things such as renewal of driver’s licenses and vehicle registration.
So far, no other details have been released about the potential data breach such as how many customers may have been affected and a time frame rom when the data may have been compromised.
Adam Levin who is the chairman and co-founder of Credit.com and Identity Theft 911 has stated that as long as only credit card information was stolen and not personal data, the overall impact is very limited but can be very annoying for those affected.
Levin stated, “It’s not dangerous, it’s just annoying. It’s going to require you to change your credit card number yet again.”
Other organisations have already started similar investigations such as the reported investigation by Sears and by those who suffered a similar data breach such as White Lodging.
Hackers are developing more sophisticated methods of attack to obtain data for financial gains as the rewards become greater. Therefore, it is now vital that companies ensure that they have the best security plan in place and regularly test it to help protect themselves against the ever increasing threat of cyber hackers and cyber thieves.
This should be supported with a robust backup solution to ensure that data can always be recovered no matter what action a hacker or cyber thieves takes such as modifying or deleting the data.
