Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen restaurants in the US have disclosed a data breach which could have affected its customers who visited late last year or early 2018. Darden Restaurants Inc who owns the restaurant chain announced the breach could have affected customers visiting between November 3rd 2017 and January 2nd 2018.
A bad actor or a group of bad actors have gained access to the payment system of the restaurant chain in the states of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, and Wisconsin.
What is the information that was leaked?
The information leaked contained payment card information and payment card numbers of more than 567,000 customer’s different cards. The company has announced that it takes the information of the customers very seriously and it has disabled the network and it completely replaced the payment network in April 2018. They advised;
“Once Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen learned of this incident, we engaged a third-party cybersecurity firm to investigate. Our current systems and networks were not impacted by this incident. The unauthorized access appears to have occurred on a network that was permanently disabled and replaced by April 10, 2018. It’s important to note that there are no indications of unauthorized access to the current Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen network and systems.”
The company has also arranged the free identification theft protection to the customers by partnering with IDCare which includes free credit and CyberScan monitoring. MyIDCare service also includes $1,000,000 insurance reimbursement policy. The company has also requested its customers to place a fraud alert on their files which makes it more difficult to get the credit card transaction processed.
The cyber attack incident affected point-of-sale machines that had been a part of Cheddar’s before Darden purchased the restaurant company in April 2017. That same system was disabled earlier this year and is no longer being used after the organization updated equipment and practices as it integrated Cheddar’s into the rest of Darden.
How to access MyIDCare services…
The customers who are impacted by this data breach will be able to get free protection services from the credit monitoring firm named MyIDCare. If you are one of the customers who was affected by this breach please visit the MyIDcare’s website to get your free monitoring service.
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