The company didn’t have too many details but did say that theft of card data "may have occurred from sometime in October 2013 to early November 2013."
"As soon as the Briar Group became aware that our restaurants – and therefore our customers – may have been a target of this crime, we undertook an immediate investigation into this issue,” the company said in a statement. “We are reporting that the Briar Group's systems were indeed infiltrated. The investigation remains active and ongoing,"
The Briar Group said that it is still working to determine the exact dates and will update its website as it learns more.
"We have been working closely with law enforcement officials and are providing them with all available information to support their effort to identify the criminals who undertook this act," The Briar Group said.
All of the company’s systems are PCI compliant and updated regularly, it said, and it has worked with security experts to lock down its systems to determine if its payment system was hacked.
“We want to assure you that the Briar Group takes the security of the personal information and bank data of all of our customers seriously,” said the company. “For the past several years, we have been working with data service and security professionals McGladrey to assure that we meet or exceed industry standards in terms of data security.”
As always, anyone who visited the restaurants during that period should monitor his or her card statements carefully for fraudulent charges, and should take action to alert the banking institution is there are unauthorized charges on the card.