Sally Beauty investigating ‘unusual activity’ with payment cards

  • By Maria Halkias The Dallas Morning News
  • Monday, May 4, 2015 1:18pm
  • Business

DALLAS – Sally Beauty Holdings said Monday it is investigating unusual activity involving payment cards used at some of its U.S. Sally Beauty stores during the week of April 27.

“Since learning of these reports, we have been working with law enforcement and our credit card processor and have launched a comprehensive investigation with the help of a leading third-party forensics expert to aggressively gather facts while working to ensure our customers are protected,” the Dallas-area company said.

Until the investigation is completed it’s difficult to know he scope or nature of any potential incident, Sally Beauty said in the statement. “We will continue to work vigilantly to address any potential issues that may affect our customers.”

The company set up a customer hotline at 1-866-234-9442. It also posted a Q&A online.

Sally Beauty is a retailer and distributor of professional beauty supplies with sales of $3.8 billion last year. It operates 4,900 stores in several countries including 2,800 in the U.S.

In March 2014, Sally Beauty said that had a data breach and discovered evidence that customer records were stolen and removed from its system. The number of files containing customer credit card information taken is less than 25,000, the company said.

On Monday, the company also said it will not speculate about the cause or source of the latest reported activity.

Earlier incidents have shown, the company said, that it’s “difficult to get a full picture of the nature and details of a data security breach/incident prior to the completion of a comprehensive forensic investigation.”

Sally Beauty reports fiscal second-quarter results on Tuesday. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expect the company to report a profit of 39 cents a share and a total sales increase of 3.3 percent to $949.8 million.

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