Risks in Outsourced Data Warehousing

http://www.usatoday.com/money/perfi/credit/2009-01-21-visa-mastercard-credit-security-breach_N.htm

http://www.heartlandpaymentsystems.com/

The USA Today article "Mastercard, Visa warn security breach may compromise data" (Byron Acohido, 1/23/2009) illustrates the inherent risk associated with web-based data management. Heartland Payment Systems manages 100 million credit card transactions from Visa and Mastercard per month. On Tuesday, Heartland disclosed that hackers had infiltrated its system. It should be assumed that all transactions were compromised. It is still unclear as to the exact time frame of the data breach. Upper estimates indicate the breach may have lasted up to two months.

To put this breach in perspective, retailer TJX reserved $194 million to correct 94 million compromised records. If Heartland was exposed for two months, up to 200 million records may have been impacted. This current data breach has the potential to be the largest ever disclosed.

This episode shows the risks involved in data warehousing. The driving force behind data warehousing is the ability transfer large quantities of information over the internet. Because the internet is easily accessed around the globe, anyone with a computer has the potential to exploit the weakest link in a data warehouse's security. There is a constant challenge for white-hat hackers to stay one step ahead of malicious hackers. This latest breach demonstrates how quickly and unexpectedly hackers can infiltrate data believed to be protected.

For all the advantages data warehousing provides, this occurrence should be viewed as simply the cost of doing business. The business intelligence a corporation can gain by effectively utilizing data mining far outweighs the downside of the occasional security breach.