In December, 2015, Landry?s, management company of Landry?s Seafood, Rainforest Cafe, McCormick & Schmick?s and affiliated Golden Nugget hotel and casino operations, reported?unauthorized?charges placed on their customers? payment cards after used in their establishments.? It occurred between May 4, 2014 and Dec. 3, 2015 in scattered locations worldwide.
Investigators concluded the hacking attacks were successful by installing malware on some of the POS machines. The rogue software on these machines allowed the hackers to collect the sensitive financial information of these customers from reading the magnetic strip of their credit cards.
The breach was identified to be a decentralized attack. It preyed upon the locations that are operating outdated equipment and operating systems.
Some of the infected locations were found to be using OSs for which Microsoft no longer provides security patches, while others were found simply to be slow to implement existing security patches to their software.
Since the breach occurred, Landry?s has implemented security policies and has placed emphasis on rolling out greater security measures designed to reduce the chances of something like this occurring again. This, however, is little comfort to their customers whose sensitive data have been compromised.
It also points to the sad reality of most companies are in reactive mode, rather than proactive mode where security threats are concerned. There?s a dangerous habit on display of doing nothing until a breach occurs.
