PayChoice offers more details about data breach

PayChoice “victimized by cyber criminals,” says CEO

PayChoice, which this week confirmed that its online payroll systems operations were breached on Sept. 23, is now beginning to offer details on what it thinks may have happened.

The company did not publicly inform the media until earlier this week when Washington Post columnist Brian Krebs revealed some information known about the intrusion. PayChoice today tells Network World “the company was preparing a timely public statement before the Washington Post report.”

“We are concerned that PayChoice has joined a growing list of other well-known firms that have been victimized by cyber criminals,” says PayChoice CEO Robert Digby in a statement.

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PayChoice, which this week confirmed that its online payroll systems operations were breached on Sept. 23, is now beginning to offer details on what it thinks may have happened.

The company did not publicly inform the media until earlier this week when Washington Post columnist Brian Krebs revealed some information known about the intrusion. PayChoice today tells Network World “the company was preparing a timely public statement before the Washington Post report.”

“We are concerned that PayChoice has joined a growing list of other well-known firms that have been victimized by cyber criminals,” says PayChoice CEO Robert Digby in a statement.

That ever-growing list, of course, could include Heartland Payment Systems, which disclosed a data breach earlier this year that has had enormous impact on banking and card processing as it became known that cybercriminals had a chance to dip into information about 100 million payment cards. But that incident came to light because CEO Robert Carr coordinated an outreach to proactively inform the public, through the media, about its data breach and has not shied from taking tough questions.The same could be said about Hannaford Brothers, the Portland, Maine-based supermarket chain, whose CEO Ronald Hodge stepped forward last year to disclose a breach there of customer payment information.

Morristown, N.J.-based PayChoice provides payroll processing services and also licenses its payroll-management product to 240 payroll-processing firms serving 125,000 organizations.

The company says it became aware of the attack “when it saw what appeared to be phishing e-mails telling clients they should download a browser plug-in to continue using their online accounts,” PayChoice says in its statement. “The e-mails included client user names and partial passwords, which indicated a breach of PayChoice’s Online Employer website.”

PayChoice says “within hours of the attack, the company notified its clients, shut down the site, and deployed further security measures to protect client information before restoring access to the system.” PayChoice has also notified authorities and federal law enforcement.

“Only customers using Online Employer were affected,” PayChoice said in its statement. “The majority of PayChoice’s clients, those using telephone, fax or other non-Web-based input methods, were not impacted.”

PayChoice contends there’s no evidence of unauthorized access to sensitive employee information. But the firm adds “clients should notify employees to carefully review their bank, credit card and other statements and to notify law enforcement officials immediately if they discover suspicious activity.” The firm says it has also engaged forensics experts to investigate further and according to Digby’s statement, “we will be reviewing all aspects of our security protocol to add any additional necessary protective measures.”

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