 An American computer hacker, Albert Gonzalez, was sentenced in March 2010 to 20 years in prison for his role in the hacking ring that broke into the Heartland computer systems.In February 2018, two Russian hackers were sentenced for a string of hacking including the Heartland breach.On May 1, 2009, Visa and Heartland issued a statement that Heartland successfully validated its compliance with PCI DSS and was returned to Visa's list of PCI DSS Validated Service Providers.On May 24, 2009, Heartland commercially launched their E3, an end-to-end encryption technology designed to safeguard credit and debit card account information from the moment of card swipe and through the Heartland network.