Chipotle’s Data Security Breach

Chipotle Mexican Grill has a legion of loyal customers who eat at the restaurant almost daily for their healthy, low-cost menu but are now being subjected to yet another level of inconvenience. The Center for Disease Control reported that 92% of the 52 people that contracted E. coli poisoning reported having eaten at Chipotles within the previous week. Such health concerns chased away customers in 2015 and 2016 and damaged the company’s brand that came to be associated more with uncleanliness and careless food preparation than in serving healthy, inexpensive food, which was the restaurant chain’s original plan. Now Chipotle customers will have to worry about their bank account balances for months going forward after a massive data security breach has exposed Chipotle customer’s most personal financial information to the underworld.

If you have recently eaten at Chipotle Mexican Grill, chances are that a criminal syndicate is now in possession of your most critical credit card and banking data. In a data breach that has affected Chipotle restaurants across the nation, the company’s point of sale software, the computers where an employee enters your order and takes payment, i.e., your credit card information, experienced a data breach that exposed its entire computer system to malware. In what is being called a “massive cyber-security attack”, if you paid for your Chipotle food order by scanning your credit or debit card between the dates of March 24 to April 18, 2017, your card was likely affected. The extent of a person’s exposure is unknown and is causing consternation to millions of Chipotle customers. Security experts are advising that people who might have been subject to the breach to keep an eye on their online statements daily and monitor any unknown charges that might occur. Due to the scope and size of the problem, it is likely that the actual security issues will be dealt with on a corporate level at your bank or credit card company. It might be a good idea, however, if you changed your pin number just in case. There is no need to cut up your credit card.

Source:
http://www.newyorkupstate.com/restaurants/2017/05/chipotle_data_breach_exposed_credit_card_info_at_29_upstate_ny_restaurants_full.html