Target: The Largest Data Breach/Attack Essay

Even though Target is ranked currently 36 in the fortune 500 companies and have over 1750 stores, they are still very susceptible to being a victim of a cyber attack. In 2013, Target fell victim to a security breach on their system. Roughly around Thanksgiving of 2013, someone had installed malware in Target’s security and payment system enabling the hackers to steal credit card and personal information. “Six months earlier the company began installing a $1.6 million malware detection tool made by the computer security firm FireEye, whose customers also include the CIA and the Pentagon.” (BloombergBusiness) In place was a very effective security system. However, when the attacked happen on November 30, FireEye spotted the hackers and Bangalore (a third party cyber security company hired by Target) that alerted the IT team at corporate office in Minneapolis. There was no response from Target’s Corporate IT team and therefore led to 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers and other personal

Even though Target is ranked currently 36 in the fortune 500 companies and have over 1750 stores, they are still very susceptible to being a victim of a cyber attack. In 2013 Target fell victim to a security breach on their system. Roughly around Thanksgiving of 2013 someone had installed malware in Target’s security and payment system enabling the hackers to steal credit card and personal information. “Six months earlier the company began installing a $1.6 million malware detection tool made by the computer security firm FireEye, whose customers also include the CIA and the Pentagon.” (BloombergBusiness) In place was a very effective security system, but when the attacked happen on November 30, FireEye spotted the hackers and Bangalore, a third party cyber security company hired by Target alerted the IT team at corporate office in Minneapolis. There was no response from Target’s Corporate IT team and therefore led to the 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers

During the last Christmas season, Target announced that their data security was breached. According to David Lazarus in Los Angeles Times, Target stated that roughly 110 million customers’ information was illegally taken from their database. The information included their credit/debit card info, phone numbers, and email addresses. Target is one of the most popular grocery stores in the U.S.; they have a substantial amount of consumers. Because of this incident, consumers' trusts for the store have been decreasing. Worrying about losing its customers, the company offered a free year of credit monitoring and identity-theft protection, so the customers will feel more secure. Not only Target, some other large retailers also faced the same issues. They want their customers to trust that the companies can protect private data. However, should we not worry? Data breaches have been going on for about a decade, but we have not seriously thought about the issue. In order to protect people’s privacy, the federal government should make new laws concerning companies’ handling of customer information.

The Target Corporation has undergone many changes due to the 2013 security breach where hackers stole personal information from credit and debit cards of at least 70 million customers. Target sales and reputation has dropped from this instance, thus eliciting changes in their security systems, changes in management, and a few policy changes in handling customer information. With the public eye on the corporation’s handling of the situation, Target has been communicating these changes through various means. The changes they needed to communicate were informing customers of the security breach, addressing the bad press coverage to shareholders, downsizing of employees, and

Target and its larger grocery-carrying incarnation, SuperTarget, have carved out a niche by offering more upscale, fashion-forward merchandise than rivals Wal-Mart and Kmart (Target, 2014). Target has had its share of problems in the past, one of the most infamous being the credit card breach in late 2013. Target informed the public that at least 40 million of its customer’s debit and credit card information had been hacked. In spite of the security breach Target is well known philanthropic actives.

The Security breach that hit Target in 2014 was one of the worst ever. It exposed names, addresses, phone numbers, credit and debit cards information’s of 70 million customers. Target informed that all transactions and customers’ information between Nov.27 to Dec. 15 2014 were stolen on the attack by hackers. This attack affect millions and the giant store as well losing money when their sales declined to 2.5 percent. Target had to email all affected customers and help all of them with their own credit monitoring by offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection and also make them no liable to any fraudulent purchase after the breach. It was a big deal and it was all over the news. Two suggestions I would give is one, add a protocol

The Home Depot and Target have been one of the many retail establishments cyber attack breaches that have being targeted by cyber attackers. The Home Depot was the target of a cyberattack payment card system breach where their credit card information was basically stolen on September of 2014. The attacked occurred by attackers gaining third party credentials in order to gain access to the system, after they gained access to the system they weakened the system gaining their own access privileges. After doing all the mentioned above, malware was installed quickly on Home Depot’s self-check-out system. All these steps where taking by the cyber attackers resulting in the loss of more than fifty million credit card accounts and email addresses.

In December 2013, the CEO, Gregg Steinhafle, of Target announced that their company was affected by a data breach that occurred between November 27 and December 15, 2013. “Target disclosed that online thieves hacked into its computer system, stealing credit card or personal information from more than 100 million customers. Both personal data and credit card information may have been stolen from about 12 million people” (Abrams, 2014). The outcome of this breach has cost Gregg Steinhafle his job, as well as the trust of Target’s consumers, investors, and close to $150 million in breach-related costs. This breach is considered one of the largest retail data breaches in U.S. history due to the amount of personal data and credit card

This section primarily attempts to provide a better understanding as to how the 2013 data breach impacted Target’s finances. Because the breach occurred within Target’s fourth quarter 2013 period—between November 2, 2013, and February 1, 2014—financial analysis was gathered primarily from information provided in Target’s 2013 quarterly reports, 2012 and 2013 annual reports. This analysis will be divided into four parts. The first is an analysis of the company’s quarterly revenues and net earnings and how it measures year-over-year. The second assesses the company’s profitability through ratio analysis. The third segment gauges Target’s 2013 fiscal year performance with that of its biggest competitor, Walmart. The fourth and final segment looks at whether or not Target was able to regain its customers in the years that followed.

Target a large retail corporation that operates over 1,700 stores across the United States. They also operate as an online retailer at target.com. In 2012 the retailer earned more than $73 billion dollars in revenue and grew their sales by 5.1% from the previous year. Looking at the revenue and sales growth rate it is hard to fathom that more money could not be spent to ensure that consumer data is protected as much as possible. As information security specialists one of the worst things that can happen is our network gets infiltrated and customer information is stolen. On December 19, 2013 Target released a statement stating that they have had an information

The Target data breach remains one of the most notable breaches in history, it was the first time a CEO of a major corporation was fired due to a security event. The breach received an enormous amount of attention, it caused corporations and individuals to change the way they think about information security and data protection. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas 2013 hackers gained access to 40 million customer credit cards and personal data of 70 million Target customers. The intruders slipped in by using stolen credentials and from there gained access to vulnerable servers on Targets network to launch their attack and steal sensitive customer data from the POS cash registers. All this occurred without a response from Targets security operations center, even though security systems notified them of suspicious activity. The data was then sold on the black market for an estimated $53 million dollars. However, the cost to Target, creditors, and banks exceeded half of a billion dollars. This report will review how the infiltration occurred, what allowed the breach to occur including Targets response, and finally who was impacted by the security event.

People across the world are becoming disproportionately dependent on modern day technology, which results in more vulnerability to cyber-attacks including cybersecurity breaches. Today, the world continues to experience inordinate cases of cybersecurity meltdowns. There is a rapid growth in complexity and volume of cyber-attacks, and this undermines the success of security measures put in place to make the cyberspace secure for users. Cyber-attacks on both private and public information systems are a major issue for information security as well as the legal system. While most states require government organizations and certain federal vendors to report incidences of data breaches, no equivalent legislation exists to cover private entities.

In January of 2007 the parent company of TJMaxx and Marshalls known as TJX reported an IT security breach. The intrusion involved the portion of its network that handles credit card, debit card, check, and merchandise return functions. Facts slowly began to emerge that roughly 94 million customers’ credit card numbers were stolen from TJMaxx and Marshalls throughout 2006. It was believed that hackers sat in the parking lots and infiltrated TJX using their wireless network.

Today, we live in a technologically based world in which almost everything we do is done through computer-based technology. Communication, marketing, and even transactions are all done through technology. The danger of having all of your information online is that once something is on the internet, it is permanent. Whether it be your home address, phone number, or simply pictures of you and your family, you can never really remove anything. This can be both positive and negative. Negative because if your information slips into the wrong hands you can get into trouble. And this can be positive because with all kinds of people around the world posting information on the internet, it brings everyone a little closer together, making it easier to connect with people from all over the globe. One negative effect of the internet making the world a smaller place was Target’s data breach a few years back. In mid-December of 2013, Target experienced a crisis when criminals had forced their way into Target’s system, gaining access to many guests credit and debit card information. As the investigation continued, it was later determined that certain guest information, such as names, mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers were taken as well. Target has built its reputation of customer satisfaction over the years by providing excellent service to customers and having better discounts than their competitors,

a significant amount of data security breaches are due to either employee oversight or poor business process. This presents a challenge for businesses as the solution to these problems will be far greater than simply deploying a secure content management system. Business processes will need to be examined, and probably re-engineered; personnel will need to be retrained, and a cultural change may be required within the organization. These alone are significant challenges for a business. A recent example of what is probably unintentional featured an Australian employment agency’s web site publishing “Confidential data including names, email addresses and passwords of clients” from its database on the public web site. An additional