Michael's Store Inc.

Modern day technology has changed the ways in which people purchase products and services. In the twenty-first century, all business has pretty much converted over to the electronic payment systems. One swipe of a credit card and immediately the data transmits through a gateway onto the payee 's bank processing link. However, during the disbursement of data is when more than forty-three million people’s debt or credit card information becomes promised. May of these computer programs assume the title of Hackers. A hacker is one who installs malicious software onto individuals compter’s or computers networks. In hopes of gaining unauthorized access to sensitive information on the victim 's computer.

Restaurants have a tendency to be targets for cyber criminals. These criminals steal and reconfigure the payment card data for their own purposes. At the Heartland Cafe, Tom has a chance to be a target for a cyber attack by being in a high-traffic area. If the customer is compromised, Heartland Cafe will quickly lose public trust and perhaps Tom will lose the business altogether. Extra measures toward risk management should be taken to ensure that the business itself remains safe. Compliance with PCI-DSS protocols, PTS requirements and the franchisor should inform the franchisee of any software that could translate

On January 2014, Michaels an art and craft retailer and its subsidiary Aaron Brothers, revealed that costumer information database consist of payment card number and expiration date been compromised. Costumer using credit or debit card at Michaels in between May 8, 2013 to Jan 27, 2014 compromised 2.6 million cards and at Aaron Brothers in between June 26, 1013 to Feb 27, 2014 been compromised 400,000 cards. The company committed to work with other parties to improve security of payment card transaction for all consumers.

Information security is vital in organizations; more so in this era where terrorism and hacking are the order of the day. The cost of ensuring a reliable information security is high (Gulati, p.2-3). However, cyber-attacks can vary in costs and outweigh the process of security measures in place to protect information (Manske, p.55). The cost of reputation after an attack can be a major blow to the running of an organization. For instance, if an attacker access credit card information the customers may withdraw from the company or refrain from its services. Court cases against the loss of confidential information may spoil the reputation of a company . When the computer systems have been accessed illegally, the systems must be inspected, fixed and re-secured. Hackers publicly expose the hacked information; clients, sellers and investors may avoid associating with the

Macy 's, Inc., incorporated on December 13, 1985 in New York City. It is in the retail industry. The company’s shares are traded under the symbol “M” on the New York Stock Exchange. Macy’s was the first retailer to promote a woman. Macy’s established such a revolutionary business practices on the one-price system, in which the same item was sold to every customer at one price, and quoting specific prices for goods in newspaper advertising (Macy). Macy 's has about 840 stores in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico. The stores sell men 's, women 's, and children 's apparel and accessories, cosmetics, and home furnishings, among other things. Such as the tea bag, the Idaho baked potato and colored bath towels. Macy’s also was the first retailer to hold a New York City liquor license.

Therefore, it provided to its customers a free offer to monitor their credit cards to prevent Identity Theft. But this service was not meaningful because it did not provide full monitoring. This is because the identity protection program gave the customers ability to check their balance if someone tried to buy something or use their card but would not prevent using it, what can be done is to call the banker as soon as to take necessary measures to stop that transaction. Accordingly, having a new program in the company was a big change and this change needed to be trained many of the staff and this was a big challenge to keep up with the program and the needs of customers to restore confidence and raise the company again. Also it presented a discount by 10 % during the weekend (Saturday and Sunday). Then the chief executive officer Gregg Steinhafel declared that the problem was solved and everyone could shop from Target without mentioning how the problem had been tackled or how to make sure that customers’ accounts would not hacked again. Furthermore, this problem solved by removed the files and malware from its

With tons of information flowing in the marketplace; merchants, financial institutions, and consumers need to protect information and data from potential hackers looking to leverage that data. This problem exists because the average consumer and merchant is not always careful with their security measures, thus opening the door for data breaches. Data published by the Nasdaq showed the following, JP Morgan Chase had 83 million records accessed, Staples had 1.16 million records accessed, and Target had 40 million credit card numbers stolen. While those are some of most highly publicized breaches, everyday consumer data is stolen from merchants, and often the proper preventative measures were not taken. Credit Card fraud affected 31.8 million

The TJX companies breach has been labeled the largest data breach in the history of security breach and the ultimate wake up call for corporations (Dash, 2007). TJX is the parent company of chains such as TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Homegoods, and a host of retail stores across the US and Canada. In January 2007, it was discovered that hackers stole as many as 200 million customer records due to a failed security system by TJX which resulted in a $4.8 billion dollars’ worth of damages (Swann, 2007). It is said that the breach occurred because they did not have any security measures in place to protect consumer’s data such as their debit cards, credit cards, checking account information, and driver’s license numbers. Reports identified three major

Within the past year, there have been many credit and debit card hackings that have occurred, mainly targeting businesses in the United States. The three main businesses that have been targeted and successfully hacked have been Target, with 40 million card holders having their cards compromised, JPMorgan Chase, with a total of 76 million households and 7 million businesses being compromised, and The Home Depot, with 56 million card holders being attacked (Silver-Greenberg, Goldstein, Perlroth). In addition to the main stories about hacking that everyone hears about, there are many others that are never brought to the attention of consumers. Within the first half of 2014 alone, there were 76 breaches solely in the United States that caused credit card numbers to be compromised (Newsham). Learning about these situations struck me as extremely intriguing and lead me to want to learn even more about these hacking situations. In researching about this topic and looking in depth at all the information I found, I discovered that there are many other subtopics that interested me as well, including consumer hacking in general, how credit cards work, what technology is needed for credit cards to work, how information is stored safely within companies to prevent hacking, the technology behind hacking, the main programs used within hacking, if, and how, social media has effected hacking, learn more about what big name companies and bank franchises should be doing in

As we have progressed throughout the chapters in this course we have learned more and more about consumer economics. The knowledge it takes to keep consumers safe and up to date is constantly changing to allow consumers to protect themselves from potential problems that they are aware of as well as things that are concealed. During the last few chapters of this course one topic that really stuck out was identity theft. It is very fascinating that people are capable of stealing so much information people they don’t even know. This information that hackers and other intelligent people collect can change the average consumer’s life as well as company’s reliability. During this essay, the topic of identity theft will be covered as a consumer is affected as well as how cybercrimes using the same methods can affect very large companies. This in turn will affect consumers.

I examine the evolution of credit card fraud in regards of the technology or methodology fraudsters used specifically within the e-commerce industry, and discuss various security concerns companies have for establishing online shopping sites. The appearance of credit cards and the growing e-commerce industry in the past decade has provided fraudsters more ways to commit fraud through online activities than ever. Numerous underground activities existed to provide conveniences for fraudsters to buy and sell credit card information at low prices in order to perform fraud in many different ways. With the frequent data breaches in the retailing industry lately, many security concerns in establishing online shopping sites have emerged.

The recent compromise of Target has exposed a more underlying issue of merchant’s inability to monitor and secure the payment systems and the databases that store consumer card information. When it comes to the technology in place that monitors and secure customer information, there are no active monitoring of the systems. There will need to be an overhaul of the current technology in place by these organizations, if they hope to combat fraud and protect consumers from data breaches and merchant compromises. (Heun, D. (2013).

TJX was one of the biggest retail chains present almost all over the world but was equally vulnerable to the security breaches. Due to its massive popularity, a security concern at TJX would affect the masses and could possibly lead to a financial downturn in company’s figures. The main concern haunting the stakeholders of TJX was the massive security breach in its information technology infrastructure caused by the weak encryption techniques that they followed which ultimately resulted in gain of access to sensitive customer data by the unauthorized users. A continued trend of this sort will make the customers apprehensive in using their services in the long run.Though the company claimed to have a robust IT system in place, the continuous intrusion attacks by various hackers suggested otherwise.

On December 19, 2013, the field of information technology security was forever changed when Target publicly acknowledged that hackers have breached their system and personal information of about 70 million customers were stolen. This was an unprecedented event because before the breach many companies did not take IT security as seriously as they should. As the dust settled, the world witnessed what can happen when a company have a vulnerable security system. As impressive as this data breach look from a security perspective, the enormous attack wasn’t very ingenious. A few days before the Thanksgiving, a malware was installed in the target’s security and payment system designed to steal customers information from 1797 target stores in America. However, target could have easily prevent this attack they were more proactive about their security.

TJX, the largest off‐price clothing retailer in the United States still suffers from the biggest credit‐card theft in history. The company lost 94 million credit and debit card numbers resulting in a huge amount of fraudulent transactions due to weak security systems in at least one store. In addition, the customers lost believe in TJX‐ which led to a huge cut of sales.