Heartland Payment Systems is a credit card processing company that handles 100 million credit card transactions per month. They recently went public with the fact that their network was breached and unauthorized access was gained to those credit card transactions. The company did not know, or did not disclose, which and how many credit card records were compromised, but they did say that the records accessed were sufficient to allow hackers to make duplicate credit cards.
In Florida, if a company that maintains certain identification or financial information about others suffers a material breach of its network or files, an important legal duty is triggered. Failure to comply with that legal duty could subject the company to costly penalties and severe damage to its reputation. When a company has reason to believe its network has been materially compromised, Florida law requires the company to conduct a reasonable investigation to determine the extent of the breach and whether harm has, or likely will, come to any of the individuals whose data are maintained. This investigation must be thoroughly documented. Depending on the results of that investigation, the company may be required to notify individuals of the data breach.
If you work for a company in Florida and have had your network breached, or have reason to believe your network has been breached, you can learn more about your legal rights here or contact us to learn more about what Florida law requires when a data breach occurs.