Case Study Questions On Management Information Systems

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

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

Cyber crimes from criminal organizations has risen over the past few years many of these have been located overseas and most of them have been based in Eastern Europe that hire and direct hackers on what they want done. The statement has been made that the battle lines between cyber attacks by organized crime reaches far wider than just an institution's firewalls. One such organized cybercrime unit is the Russian Business Network they are one of the more well known criminal organizations delving into the global networks of the financial institutions.

In December of 2013, target corporation faced a serious security breach where over 40 million credit cards were stolen from different target stores. This paper is going to explore the problem, the background information about the problem, the controls that could have been in place to prevent the issue, the intended plan of control and the associated risks involved.

This paper explores seven references that report the results from research conducted on-line regarding the 2013 Target breach. According to the website “Timeline of Target 's Data Breach And Aftermath: How Cybertheft Snowballed For The Giant Retailer” (2015), the breach occurred November and December 2013 in which customers who shopped at Target locations credit and debit cards were breached and their personal information was exposed. Upon their investigation, it was determined their point of sale system was hacked. “Wikipedia” states point of sale system which is used by third party vendors has cash registers as well as barcodes which stores customer’s information. The website “What is Packet Sniffer” (2016), Packet Sniffing may have been a way the attacked happened. “RAM Scraping Attack” website indicates what RAM means and how this type of attack happens. “What is a Firewall in Networking and How They Protect Your Computers” (2014), “What is Endpoint Security? Data Protection 101” and “Why SSL? The Purpose of using SSL Certificates” websites each provide ways to reduce and/or prevent future attacks.

One of the largest issues with this data breach is, just six months prior, Target had installed “a $1.6 million malware detection tool made by the computer security firm FireEye (FEYE), whose customers also include the CIA and the Pentagon” (Riley, Elgin, Lawrence, & Matlack, 2014). The problem was not the software, it was a lack of reaction by Target’s security team located in Minneapolis. Once the credit card and personal information was stored, the hackers moved the information to various locations throughout the U.S. before sending the data to their computers in Russia. On December 12, 2013, Federal investigators notified Target of a massive data breach; and on December 15, 2013, Target confirmed and eradicated the malware, after all of the credit card and personal information had been stolen.

Like all the threat, this adware intrudes computer via free software, this software does not disclose that they are bundled with this malware. Sometimes this threat can enter into a computer by spam email attachment and hyperlinks. Some misleading websites such as questionable web pages, torrent sites, social media platforms etc.

Michael’s Store, Inc. is an arts & crafts Retail chain. It has more than 1040 stores located in 49 US states & Canada. The company also owns and operates the Aaron brother’s retail chain, which happens to have an additional 115 stores across the Country. Michael’s store Inc. had a Security breach, which took place between May 8, 2013 and January 27, 2014. About 2.6 million cards or about 7 percent of payment cards used at its stores during the period were affected. Alarmingly, its subsidiary Aaron brothers also had been breached between June 26, 2013 and February 27, 2014. It was reported that Aaron brothers had 400,000 cards impacted. The duration of the treacherous attack in total was 8 months (Schwartz, 2014). In this report, security breach of Michael’s store Inc. is analyzed. The topics covered are how the breach occurred, what did the authorities do to educate the customers & how in future such attacks can be avoided.

Between November 27th, 2015 and December 15, 2015, someone hacked into Targets database and stole critical information. Target said that the thieves stole massive amounts of credit and debit card information during the holiday season also took names, addresses, and phone numbers of 70 million customers. This was information that could put victims at greater risk for identity theft.

Malware, or “malicious software”, has taken different forms and names for years. Spyware and viruses are just a few of the common titles attributed to this devastating means of cyber attack, the main purpose of which is to ultimately compromise a rival's computer infrastructure. State-sponsored attacks have typically been perpetrated by means of malware. Spear-phishing is one particularly popular means of malware, where by a target is fooled into opening a corrupted email or file, only to unwittingly download a compromising piece of malware onto their computer (XX). Once this malware is installed, control of the computer is placed in the hands of the hacker, allowing them to hack other networks while proving impossible to track down (XX18). China has been a prime culprit for spear-phishing attacks, often following current events to target respective dignitaries. For instance, the 2010 G20 Summit saw thousands of spear-phishing campaigns against officials, with email titles labelled in relation to the Summit itself (XX). Countless departments, institutions, and governments have fallen victim to spear-phishing campaigns, at the count of millions of dollars and priceless information

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.

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

Just like a biological virus, a computer virus is able to infect and ruin lives. This malicious software constitutes more than just simple viruses but also includes other types of software including worms, Trojan horses, and ransomware. Malware has been around since the late 1980’s. Originally, people became hackers to gain notoriety online, but today, it has become more of a business. Cyber attacks originate from all around the world, and it is not just individual people that benefit from it. In two decades, numerous cyber crime syndicates have been created, and states all over the world sponsor hacker groups. Over the past twenty-five years, malware has become less about checking the integrity of computer security and gaining notoriety in the underground cyber society, and it has become more of a chaos creating, money making business that many people and institutions take part in.

Network viruses are another favorite method of cyber criminals. As we all know, viruses can bring a network to