Breach, Data Security

Trustwave responds to Target breach lawsuit, bank drops out

Trustmark National Bank on Friday dropped out of the class-action lawsuit it had filed jointly with Green Bank, N.A. against Target and information security firm Trustwave.

Chicago-based information security company Trustwave had responded on Saturday to the suit that alleged, in view of the recent Target data breach, it had failed bring the retail giant's systems up to industry standards.

"Contrary to the misstated allegations in the plaintiffs' complaints, Target did not outsource its data security or IT obligations to Trustwave," Robert McCullen, CEO at Trustwave, wrote. "Trustwave did not monitor Target's network, nor did Trustwave process cardholder data for Target."

While Trustmark voluntarily abandoned its claims in the class-action, according to court documents Green Bank's claims still remain before the court.

McCullen believes that the claims in the lawsuit are "without merit" and said that the company plans to defend itself in court against the "baseless allegations.”

The suit filed on March 25 in U.S. District Court in Chicago by the two banks, and on behalf of all similarly situated institutions, claims that after Trustwave scanned Target's computer systems in September 2013, it found no vulnerabilities.

“To the contrary, however, and as reported by The New York Times, Target kept credit and debit card data on its servers for six full days before hackers transmitted the data to a separate web server outside of Target's network,” the suit claims. 

The class-action alleges that the bugs in Target's systems, which were “either undetected or ignored by Trustwave,” led to the breach which pilfered 40 million payment cards and encrypted PIN data, in addition to other personal information.

The lawsuit contends that the breach was preventable.

UPDATE (2:40 p.m. EST): In a Monday interview, Melanie Morgan, senior vice president and director of corporate communications with Trustmark National Bank, confirmed to SCMagazine.com that the bank did decide to pull out of the class-action suit, but would continue to consider its options in respect to the expenses incurred as a result of the Target data breach.

UPDATE (6:18 p.m. EST): On Monday, Green Bank, N.A. also decided to dismiss its claims in relation to the class-action lawsuit, according to recently released court documents.

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