Visa: I don’t know whether to laugh or cry

As you probably know, I was a little ticked off that Visa issued a warning about a breach at a payment processor, but with all kinds of mystery and vagueness about who it was who was actually impacted.

Interestingly, it turns out now that that’s not exactly the situation. It’s not the “clever disguise” and misdirection on the part of Visa that I thought it was. Instead, it’s more like procrastination – or maybe incompetence depending on what specifically is going on over there (which we still don’t entirely know). Apparently, they’re not trying to sweep all the breach-related pain under the rug (the up side), but are causing a bunch of confusion due to the fact that it actually occurred even before heartland but they’re just now getting around to it. Um… alrighty then.

Which begs the question – why is it that we still don’t know what company was impacted? Is Visa waiting to determine for sure and for true whether a breach occured before making public who this is? That might be a good idea, but in that case I would question why they’re just doing it with this company and haven’t done it in the past. Are they waiting for whatever company it is to divulge of their own accord? Wouldn’t that be nice of them… But is that responsible and good for the rest of us? I happen not to think so.

Whatever it is they’re up to, I’m sure they have their reasons – although my suspicion is that we’ll never get clarity on what they are. Maybe we will… I guess we’ll have to wait and see. In the meantime, enjoy a news story about an ugly cat.