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Heartland Payment Systems, the sixth-largest payments processor in the U.S., announced Monday that its processing systems were breached in 2008, exposing an undetermined number of consumers to potential fraud. Meanwhile, Forcht Bank, one of the 10 largest banks in Kentucky, told its customers it would begin reissuing 8,500 debit cards after being informed by its own card processor of a possible breach. In the case of Heartland, while the company continues to assess the damages inflicted by the attack, Robert Baldwin, the company's president and CFO, says law enforcement has already noted that the attack against his company is part of a wider cyber fraud operation. "The indication that it is tied to wider cyber fraud operation comes directly from conversations with the Department of Justice and the U.S. Secret Service," Baldwin says. The company says it believes the breach has been contained. Heartland, headquartered in Princeton, NJ, handles approximately 100 million transactions per month, although the number of unique cardholders is much lower. "It is still a question as to the percentage of the data flow they were able to get," Baldwin says, adding he would not speculate on the number of cards potentially exposed. Specifics surrounding when the breach occurred are still being analyzed. But Baldwin says two forensic auditing teams have been working on the breach analysis and investigation since late 2008, after Heartland received the notification from Visa and MasterCard. The investigation began immediately after the credit card companies told Heartland they saw suspicious activity surrounding processed card transactions. Described by Baldwin as "quite a sophisticated attack," he says it has been challenging to discover exactly how it happened.