Data Breaches On TJX Companies

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.

Hackers can gain access to the computer records of banks, credit card companies, hospitals, merchants, universities, government agencies, and other organizations. Though such breaches occur much more rarely than phishing, even one instance can give the hacker access to millions of people’s personal data, including Social Security numbers, birth certificates, driver’s license numbers, health records, employment records, and financial information. The FBI reports that, since

This analysis discusses some issues and requirements to correct these issues that are outlined in the Turn Key University (TKU) data breach case study. In addition to these issues and requirements, some applicable laws will be discussed and some controls will be suggested for implementation.

What do Premara Blue Cross, Anthem, Chick-fil-A, Sony, USPS, MCX, Staples, Kmart, Dairy Queen, SuperValue, Jimmie John's, Viator, Home Depot, PF Chang's, Community Health Systems, and JP Morgan all have in common? Each of these companies were hacked during 2014-2015. Sadly, this is just a short list showing the breadth of industries and size of operations that are vulnerable. According to Time Magazine in March, 2015, "You're not just imagining it: Lately, a new data breach has been reported almost every week."

The biggest security flaw of this breach was the lack of concern by the security team regarding the vulnerability that was detected by the malware detection software. The company, FireEye, had installed the $1.6 million malware detection tool, notified the Target security team of a possible breach of data on November 30, 2013, only three days after the malware software had begun to collect customer data. This had allowed the Target security team enough time to begin to research

The costs that the company will incur can be broken down into six different categories: investigation and remediation, notification, identify theft and credit monitoring, disruptions in normal business operations, and lost business. Investigation costs involve those related to examining how and why the data was compromised, and remediation costs relate to the costs incurred to set up safeguards. Home Depot’s pre-tax expense relating to investigation and remediation was $43 million in the third quarter of 2014 alone. Notification costs relate to notifying the relevant individuals, regulators, and media personnel. Simply mailing notification letters, at 49 cents per stamp, equates to a $27.44 million expense. Costs relating to identify theft and credit monitoring include the cost of identity theft protection for each of the victims. Assuming $10 per victim, this results in a $560 million cost for Home Depot. Disruptions to Home Depot’s normal business operations include the opportunity cost of the reduced investments in the company’s operations, as well as reduced time on standard business activities. This cost is estimated to be $20 per victim. Home Depot will likely lose business due to customers being scared away, and the related cost is approximately $30 per victim. Finally, lawsuits relating to the data breach are expected to incur $3 billion in expenses for Home Depot. 44 suits have already surfaced since the cyberattack. (“Home Depot: Will

Jarvis, K., & Milletary, J. (2014, January 24). Inside a targeted point-of-sale data breach. Retrieved from http://krebsonsecurity.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Inside-a-Targeted-Point-of-Sale-Data-Breach.pdf

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

Complete financial analysis on the $ cost / benefit investment needed to upgrade technology security. Technology is expensive; however, data breaches are even more expensive.

All the consumers affected were also made vulnerable to subsequent identity theft given malicious attackers stole their personal data. Equifax was directly affected since its stock began to plunge immediately the news was made public. Additionally, the corporate governance of the company was tarnished given three Equifax executives sold shares worth around $2 million days after the breach discovery, and the “retiring” of the chief security information officers is questionable (Surane & Melin, 2017). Also, the company was exposed to litigations with some lobbyists and interest groups pushing regulators to hold Equifax accountable for the negligence and poor treatment of affected consumers. The proposed new data security laws will present a greater burden to other corporations. Two such laws are the Promoting Responsible Oversight of Transactions and Examinations of Credit Technology (PROTECT), and Freedom From Equifax Exploitation (FREE) will attract more government scrutiny and limit the type of personal data that companies can collect from customers (Alperan, Carter, & Sofio, 2017).

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.

Data breaches happen daily, in too many places at once to keep count. But there is some huge breach versus a small one and we will take some examples from the biggest or most significant breaches of the 21st century to show how much risk or damage the breach caused for companies, insurers and users or account holders.

On average the cost of an IBM breach has risen to $4 million dollars per incident. In the previous year, a study showed that the average cost per breach was $3.79 million (Hackett, 2016). The cost of these breaches can vary widely by the industry type, but as IBM reported it cost millions of dollars to rectify these breaches. Its important for these companies to be aware of new technology and stay up to date on privacy software in order to cut these cost.

Data breaches are increasingly common as companies are faced with securing a multitude of networks, devices, applications, users, and files used in the course of conducting business. And with global workforces and the rise of cloud computing, security perimeters are more difficult to define than ever before. These issues combine to create a perfect storm – a climate ripe for hackers to take advantage of. (Lord, 2017) Below are the trending data loss trends to watch out for: