CO-OP Financial Services, the payment CUSO parent of the CO-OPNetwork and CO-OP Shared Branching, has issued a statementsupporting FIS in the wake of a critical supervisory letter fromfederal regulators that the processor has received and NCUA hasforwarded to credit unions.

The March 16 NCUA letter urged credit unions to examine their vendor relationship with the processor in lightof the supervisory letter that the agency enclosed but, afterstressing that its operations were unaffected by the breach, CO-OPexpressed confidence in the firm.

“FIS was the victim of a publicly-disclosed cyber-attack inearly 2011 against a client of one of its prepaid card programs,”the CUSO, which is a partner with FIS in several areas, wrote onApril 10. “CO-OP's EFT and shared branching systems are operatedunder the direction of CO-OP and they were not involved in the 2011incident.”

CO-OP also revealed more direct information about FIS' responseto the breach than FIS has. According to CO-OP, “FIS has takenaction in three areas: personnel, including a new executive-levelChief Information Security Officer; PCI Re-certification andenhanced information security measures,” adding “[w]e support FISin their efforts to address these issues and feel their changeswill benefit in the long term our relationship even though therewas no impact to CO-OP-related business.”