Target Security Breach Case Study

When I think of security breaches, I always think of the many stores that I have shopped at, only to find out months later they have been hacked. A few years ago I remember Target stores causing widespread panic, by releasing a press release that anyone who shopped in their store with a card was at risk for being hacked. These types of breaches leave customers in panic, and vigilantly inspecting their checking accounts, credit card statements, and their credit scores to ensure they have not been taken advantage of. But how prevalent are breaches? According to a report by USA Today’s Elizabeth Weise, an astounding 43% of businesses had been hacked in 2014 and they don’t seem to be slowing down (Weise, 2014).
It is important to expand further on the Target store breach of 2013. …show more content…
They were one of the first retailers to be dubbed “the company with the largest hack ever”, with over 45 million affected credit cards and customers in 2007. This time it wasn’t necessarily the card reader that was distributing the information to the hacker, it was a lack of vigilance on TJ MAXX’s end where their customer’s information was concerned. The store did not keep strict encryption of personal information such as driver’s license numbers and credit/debit card numbers. They were also not deleting customer transactions after a certain period of time, meaning all of that information was sitting in the data base for far too long, making the hack as large as it became. The breach was dealt with on the customer end by having new credit and debit cards sent to them, and discontinuing the use of the old card. One positive was because of the age of the information being stored in the company’s system, many of the card stolen were expired anyways (Jewell, 2007). Of course, TJ Maxx had committed themselves to tightening their security and encryption after nearly losing many customer’s