The data breach at Target had a massive impact on cyber security. According to Lauren Abdel-Razzaq, we live in a world where consumers don’t even think twice about paying with a credit or debit card or buying items online or with mobile devices (2014). However, data breaches have become a major threat and continue to impact companies all over the world. Companies should take information security as seriously as possible. We don’t live in a perfect world. Anything can happen at any time, even if a company has the most sophisticated security system in place. It is how a company reacts to a data breach that will make or break them. As a result of the Target data breach, most retailers have switched over to more secure payment methods. “If you install a large, strong gate at the front of your property, but a hole exists in the back fence large enough for a thief to …show more content…
“Upon investigation of what really went wrong, the FireEye security system they use showed that the warnings had been there all along, meaning the security team in Bangalore missed them, or chose to ignore them” (Marks, 2014). During the time of the year when people are doing the most shopping is not when companies should be negligent about information systems security. Once there was the smallest bit of concern, Target’s upper management should have been made aware of the situation. This could have helped them prevent the data breach, but unfortunately it was too late. Target hasn’t been the only company to fall victim to a data breach. Given the world that we now live in, regrettably, Target also won’t be the last company to be a victim. “Though Target’s breach made news due to the sheer size, hundreds of other businesses are being targeted, like eBay, Neiman Marcus, and AT&T” (Marks, 2014). There are some steps, however, that companies can implement in order to be better prepared if such an incident
After the breach, many Target customers refused to shop at their stores due to losing trust in the company. Target’s security breach was not an isolated incident; numerous other companies have faced similar security breaches such as Home Depot, Neiman Marcus, Sony, and this could even happen on your own personal home computer. As a Target cardholder and loyal customer for many years, I believe the company took appropriate actions to notify customers of the breach. Target informed me by email and sent a letter reassuring my information was not compromised. As a valued Target cardholder, I was given the opportunity to apply for the free credit-monitoring program, which I took full advantage of. As an additional measure, Target provided customers with a new online safety feature to monitor suspicious activity by allowing customers to set alerts through email or text when purchases exceeded a specified amount. Consequently, Target is tightening security and making every effort to gain back trust to retain
With Target handling the security breach as best as they could, investigators and the Department of Justice are trying to figure out how the security breach happened. Upon investigation, it is believed that “the data was obtained via software installed on machines that customers use to swipe magnetic strips on their cards when paying merchandise…”(Reuters, 2013. p.1). Even though investigators provided the theory above, they are still unsure of how the cyber criminals were able to take so many card numbers from almost all the Target stores. The investigators and feds are still looking into how and who stol...
Issa utilizes statistics to suggest ideas. He says, “The Office of Personnel Management’s security breach resulted in the theft of 22 million Americans’ information, including fingerprints, Social Security numbers, addresses, employment history, and financial records” (Issa). Issa also adds that, “The Internal Revenue Service’s hack left as many as 334,000 taxpayers accounts compromised‑though just this week, the IRS revised that number to o...
Target’s collection and possible sale of private information could go against basic principles of confidentiality since people trust that they are not revealing information that is confidential. One expects that their personal information is protected and not just provided to anyone who is willing to pay for it. At the same time, people expect Target not to be buying influence ...
At first report, the data breach was discovered to have compromised all Target stores nationwide, and it involved the theft of credit card numbers and customer stored data within the magnetic strips of cards that were used in the stores. It was believed to have occurred right after Thanksgiving Day and in to December (Krebs, 2013). Apparently, online shoppers were believed to be safe from the hack and that only the stores were attacked. Now, the intrusion was believed to have resulted from a visit to one of Target’s stores by an HVAC company named Fazio Mechanical Services from Sharpsburg, PA. Krebs (2014) stated, “Target told reporters at The Wall Street Journal and Reuters that the initial intrusion into its systems was traced back to network credentials that were stolen from a third party vendor” (para. 1).
I chose the article about the Target Data Breach because I was actually one of the people affected. I wanted to learn about how to handle the situation and what to do in case more information was compromised. I wanted to know more information about how something like this can happen and affect so many people. It is also a major issue being discussed in the news and in finance so I wanted to learn more about how Target and the banks will handle this issue. This article is about how 40 million credit and debit card accounts were stolen. It explains the difference between experiencing credit card fraud and only getting your account information stolen. Most of the people that had their information stolen were not affected by credit card fraud. An explanation of this is that fraudulent transactions may be rejected by a retailer’s anti-fraud system and the consumer might not even be aware of any activity taking place because it is being stopped before the fraud can even take place. Also, since such a large number of people were affected by the scandal, most banks have taken control and cancelled and replaced the old credit and debit cards to prevent any theft from happening. Many banks are waiting to see if the fraud actually happens before reissuing cards because it is so costly. Although there has not been very much fraud at this point, hackers may be waiting for all of the publicity to die down before they commit their fraudulent acts. The article states that many times hackers may wait a year or two to use account information. When the hackers wait a long period of time, the ...
The author appear to be moderately perplexed by the fact that American state that they are concerned about privacy but they yet disclose personal information to entities. I would offer that the reason many are disclosing the information, is that business will not offer their services or product without the personal information. One can go to another vendor for service, only to have the same problem repeated. Now what is perplexing, is the authors claim that “a significant number, 11%” (Caftori & Teicher, 2002) of the population believes that corporate owners should go to prison for violations of information privacy. I must say, I never thought of 11% of a population as a significant percentage, but I am just a student. More confusion for the authors is when a computer system that handles big data has faulty output. They use the analogy of an airline, and if they lose your luggage and should receive compensation, but this is not the case when the DMV provides faulty data. This should not be perplexing, with the airline an explicit contract is made with the purchase of the ticket. The airline is transport my body and my luggage to the agreed location without damage or loss. Luggage is tangible. The contents are worth x amount of dollars and the airline pays the individual
Information is still coming to light about the Target data breach, as the company is still actively pursuing an investigation. It has been revealed that the hackers involved in the incident began by moving data from the Target networks to Fazio, an HVAC company that Target does business with and sends a lot of digital data to, and out to a number of servers in the U.S. and Brazil. (Mick, 2014) This made it hard to spot the attack initially because a lot data was being sent to Fazio on a regular basis. It also makes the data thieves much harde...
It is without a doubt one of the greatest retail security ruptures ever. Weeks after the cyber hack initially occurred, Target at long last recognized the rupture on December 19. The genuine inquiry is the reason this basic issue remained unreported for all nowadays. In the event that announced before, clients could've taken suitable wellbeing measures to keep their data from being abused.
The issue of privacy breaching relates to the legal environment of business because every company and business holds information about its employees, customers, suppliers and other stakeholders. On top of all the information they store on other people, most companies have all their own business information kept on computers and files as well. If there were to be a breach in a company then all of the information they had stored in their systems could be stolen and sold to others. There would be major identity theft, social security fraud and even financial losses. Security breaches have become a significant risk for most businesses today. Security breaches can disrupt business operations, damage brand reputation and customer relationships, and attract government investigations and class action lawsuits.
In December 2013, Target was attacked by a cyber-attack due to a data breach. Target is a widely known retailer that has millions of consumers flocking every day to the retailer to partake in the stores wonders. The Target Data Breach is now known as the largest data breach/attack surpassing the TJX data breach in 2007. “The second-biggest attack struck TJX Companies, the parent company of TJMaxx and Marshall’s, which said in 2007 that about 45 million credit cards and debit cards had been compromised.” (Timberg, Yang, & Tsukayama, 2013) The data breach occurred to Target was a strong swift kick to the guts to not only the retailer/corporation, but to employees and consumers. The December 2013 data breach, exposed Target in a way that many would not expect to see and happen to any major retailer/corporation.
...ontinues affords to warn Target of malware being present in their system, and by ranking it with the highest level of severity, Target did not seem to care and ignore all warnings. I have no doubt in my mind that the system expert that told Target years ago to fix their POS system was ignored. Target’s culture is as much to blame as anything. Target’s primary focus is getting people through their cash register as fast as possible to keep the customers happy. This means hundreds of millions of dollars to them. I believe that they were too caught up on getting their customers through their registers and couldn’t care less about the security of their customers’ personal information. I think this is sad because real customer service is not just a person standing there sliming at you but also knowing that your information will not by exposed every time I swipe my card.
Ques1 Provide a brief overview of the case study This case study is based on the European Union Agency for Network and Information Security (ENISA) to examine the current and emerging cyber threats and threat trends for emerging technology areas. This will be followed by the explanation of threats, threat agents, technology areas and attack methods. This case study also provides a description of the procedure followed and also a few descriptions on use cases of cyber threat intelligence. The primary commitment of the ETL 2014 lies in the recognizable proof of top cyber dangers inside the reporting time frame. With the developing risk landscape, it makes up the fundamental commitment towards identifying cyber dangers.
Kharpal, A 2013, Cyber-crime is ‘greatest threat’ to companies survival: EY, CNBC, accessed 12 November 2013, http://www.cnbc.com/id/101155856
“Shoplifting, worker theft cost retailers $32 billion last year,” is the title to a Fortune 500 article written by Phil Whaba. The name of the article sums up the immense problem facing retailers in the United States. Companies are not just losing millions of dollars in merchandise to theft, they are in fact losing billions of dollars to theft. To protect themselves, many retailers and companies incorporate security to help protect their goods and mitigate the threat of thefts. While employing security to solve this issue can be effective, it also brings with it implications which can lead to lawsuits and negative publicity for the company. Some of the implications include additional training, policies and procedures for officers, as well as the additional consequences of potential injury to staff and perpetrators, which can both have far reaching legal weight attached to each issue.