Data breaches: How Visa protects cardholders

It seems like you can’t go a week without reading about some high-profile data breach in the news. And whether it’s a credit bureau, an insurance company or even the online food delivery app you use, if it involves your information it’s definitely cause for concern.

Of course, you may be wondering, what is a data breach, how do they happen, and what is Visa doing to help protect my payment information? To answer that, let’s start at the beginning.

What is a data breach?

A data breach is a security incident that reveals sensitive or protected data. It might involve a hacker, who’s penetrated a database. Or, it might involve an employee that’s accidentally released information on a web site. Or it could involve the theft of a laptop or hard drive.

The bottom line, with a data breach, information gets released that wasn’t ever intended for public release. And that information might be Social Security Numbers, email addresses, passwords, or payment card numbers. All of which could be used by identity thieves or cyber criminals.

How Visa helps with a third-party data breach

Visa’s first priority is to protect cardholders. So, once we learn about a data breach, we work closely with the breached organization and financial institutions that issue cards to closely monitor potentially compromised accounts and minimize losses due to fraudulent activity.

While a breach that involves your payment data is unnerving, there is some good news. In most cases, stolen payment data is never actually used to make fraudulent charges. And in addition, you should know that we protect cardholders with our Zero Liability policy. So even if there is a charge on your card, you won’t be responsible for it. In addition, multiple layers of security and sophisticated fraud detection help identify and prevent fraud before it happens. In fact, Visa fraud rates have remained at less than one-tenth of one percent for more than a decade, even as we have seen increases in data breaches.

A man monitors data happening on multiple screens on his desk.

Network operations center (NOC) technicians monitoring critical network elements and engaging in proactive network systems monitoring

What to do when there is a breach?

If your personal or payment account information has been compromised, there are a couple things you can consider doing:

  • Update your passwords and make them strong and unique for each account you use. When usernames and passwords are compromised, criminals can try to re-use that information at various sites beyond the one that was breached.
  • Keep an eye on your transactions and report any suspicious activity as quickly as possible to your financial institution. 

Get more detail about data breaches

The impact of a data breach that involves your personal information can go beyond financial information. To learn more about what’s involved and the best strategies if your information has been part of a breach, visit the Federal Trade Commission’s Consumer Information site.

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