Has MasterCard correctly identified the problem? What are the people, organization, and the technology issues associated with the problem?

MasterCard has been able to correct identify who was the culprit, what problem occurred, and where it happened, and believes that CardSystems lack of security allowed it to happen.

MasterCard, Visa, and American Express were the credit card companies that had customer credit card data stolen and exposed to the hacker. CardSytems was the third-party payment processing company that handled the processing of customer payments for all three companies. The technology issue that plagued these companies and led to the hacking incident was that the data was not encrypted allowing the hacker to get access to the data and try to make use of the data. Encryption might have been able to make the data useless or less valuable to the hacker, but not necessarily prevent the incident. Another issue is that customer data is supposed to be transferred to the banks, but CardSystems held on to customer data and stored it in its systems, something that they were not allowed to do. MasterCard has also said that CardSystems never demonstrated compliance with their security guidelines and never have. MasterCard seemed to fully recognize that there was a problem, but that they were not the ones to blame for it. They blamed CardSystems for the loss of their customer data and the security breach. CardSystems though says it has been audited by and independent auditor and approved by Visa payment associations.