Checkers and Rally's Restaurants Suffer a Data Breach

NOTE to READER: At the time of the hack,  Sintel Systems was not involved.
This week Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc. published a security notice on its website announcing that it suffered a data breach when hackers broke in and planted malware on its payments processing system. 102 stores or about 15% of its restaurants in 20 states may have had data exposures possibly starting back in 2015, and some lasting until April of this year. The company operates and franchises nearly 900 Rally’s and Checkers restaurants in 28 states and Washington, DC. The chain serves hamburgers, hot dogs, french fries, and milkshakes.
The data security issue even affected nine locations in the Tampa area where the parent company is based. “Based on the investigation, we determined that malware was installed on certain point-of-sale systems at some Checkers and Rally’s locations, which appears to have enabled an unauthorized party to obtain the payment card data of some guests,” the company said. They also stated that they worked with security experts to contain and remove the malware.  A list of the affected locations and the dates of the exposure were also made available on the company website.
The malware was installed to gather customer information including: 1) Cardholder name 2) payment card number 3) card verification code and 4) expiration date.
Recently, restaurants have been a frequent target for data hacks. Applebees, Sonice Drive-In, Pizza Hut, Chipotle, Wendy’s and Arby’s have all suffered breaches in the last few years.
Sintel Systems clients can rest assured that their customer information is secure. Among other procedures, Sintel Systems uses tokenization and encryption to protect purchasers’ data during transactions. Tokenization means that a random identifier called a ‘token’ is substituted for sensitive data. The token is a reference that maps back to the sensitive data through a tokenization system. Encryption is the procedure of encoding information in such a way that only authorized parties can understand it. The intended information is encrypted using an encryption algorithm called a ‘cipher’. Once encrypted, the now ciphered information can be read only if decrypted. Encryption usually uses an encryption key generated by an algorithm. When the purchase is complete, Sintel Systems does not retain sensitive customer information.
Sintel Systems Global POS is the POS industry’s only single source and direct POS onmi-channel solution provider. For more about Sintel System’s embedded merchant services please visit here: https://www.sintelsystems.com/sintelmerchant