Tjx Breach Case

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.

A root-cause analysis of the security breach revealed multi-factorial issues at the technical, individual, group, and organizational levels. At the technical level, the applications and web-tools

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 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.

There are many ways to help prevent breaches such as the Home Depot and the similar Target breach. Most retailers these days have multiple locations possibly in two or more countries like The Home Depot. Because of this the retailers need to know exactly where the business of the organization is being conducted. These organizations need to take the extra steps and know where the customer data is at all times especially payment information. They need to keep track of how it is being accessed and how it is being secured. Tom Bain, who is a senior vice president at a company called Security CounterTack, says “Retailers need to get a better grasp on who is being granted access to their networks and why” (Vijayan). Home Depot failed to do this on a daily basis and this is why the breach was so extensive. People do not know the reason as to why the company did not check these daily logs for payment information but this is the reason that they had such a big breach on their payment systems.

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

• What practices led to the security breach in TJX and why did such a smart andprofitable organization as TJX face such a situation?

Even after the attack, when the company did not know whether the customer information, which included credit card information, the company had no intention to announce the security breach to the public. This can be detrimental to the company if customers became

The article on “Equifax Security fails” this is a website where customers rely on the website and provides their personal information but the physical security failed which leaks the data of the customer’s, they had a problem protecting their customer’s information like credit card details, social security number and much more related to the customers. The Equifax website suffered a hacking attack which results to leak of the personal information of the customers. The lawyers for the plaintiffs argued, “Equifax had willfully ignored known weaknesses in its data security, including prior hacks into its information systems”. At the end, the case closed and Equifax fixes a glaring security issue. The flaw was Equifax have access to employees data with the use of default PIN numbers, the pin number could either be a

There was not enough news on recent data breach with WLAN that could be found in the internet. The one that I could find was of TJX Companies Inc data breach in 2007 through WLAN. TJX Companies Inc. is American apparel and home goods company, the parent company of TJ Maxx, Marshalls, Office Max, that was founded in 1956 in Framingham, MA. The data breach of this company was the one of the largest data theft which compromised 45 million credit cards. According to the company news release in January, 2007, a data breach was occurred and thieves accessed to credit card information stored in the company network. On the same month, many banks reported that there was increase fraud incident linked which not only had US transaction but also included foreign transaction. Entire data breach that happened was done in such a complicated way that not only the credit card information was sold online but also was used also used carefully to launder the money. How the data breach occurred was the question for everyone.

Technology: it is obvious that TJX had several technology deficiencies mainly driven by systems limitations and vulnerability. For example, inadequate wireless network security allowed the hackers to attack specific stores just by using a laptop and an antenna which permitted the thieves access to the central database. As it was mentioned in the business case, TJX was using (WEP) as the security protocol and it is

TJX collected too much personal information, kept it too long and relied on weak security encryption. At the time of the breach, few retailers had converted to WPA and didn’t want t to spend the money to implement new security measures. As a preventative control TJX should have implement WPA encryption technology. As a detective control, TJX should actively monitor and test their WLAN security. As a corrective control, TJX should actively implement the following PCI standards:

Also, TJX did not apply counter measures in place of those defined vulnerabilities or threats which costed the company huge losses. If the company implemented the WPA security protocol, the risks could have been small.

It is important to note that whether an attack is perpetrated by a hacker group, other corporations or individuals, organizations must always prepare adequately through intrusion detection and prevention systems in place. Data breaches can have very devastating business and social impact to large businesses and their customers – the users. For instance, were Cloudflare attacked by a competing company, their trade secrets could have given the opponents ammunition to take them out of the field. In addition, lost data could influence criminal activity if for instance particular client information, for

While all of these technologies have enabled exciting changes and opportunities for businesses, they have also created a unique set of challenges for business managers. Chief among all concerns about technology is the issue of information security. It seems to be almost a weekly occurrence to see a news article about yet another breach of security and loss of sensitive data. Many people will remember high profile data breaches from companies such as T.J Maxx, Boston Market, Sports Authority, and OfficeMax. In the case of T.J. Maxx, a data breach resulted in the loss of more than 45 million credit and debit card numbers. In many of these incidents, the root cause is a lack of adequate security practices within the company. The same technologies that enable managers can also be used against them. Because of this, businesses must take appropriate steps to ensure their data remains secure and their communications remain