Target Data Breach Essay

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Target Data Breach
Charles Moore
American Military University

Abstract
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 …show more content…
The attackers took the time to make sure to embed their malicious software inside files that were already being used on the target network. Masking and hiding their code allowed them to go undetected for several days. By the time they were discovered they had collected over 70 million consumers financial information and were selling the card information in batches (“29 new clues,” 2014).
Target Management
Once Target realized the nature and magnitude of the breach they released a statement to its consumers stating there was a breach. It began taking a proactive and open approach to the details of the attack and how it happened. Most companies would want to keep this information quiet and not lose customer confidence. Target has been one of the few that has a dedicated website that discusses the breach and what they are doing so that it doesn’t happen again. Within the website they have a FAQ section for consumers to understand what happened in laymen’s terms.
The executive vice president and CFO John Milligan has recently stated that Target will be implementing smart cards for their retail credit cards that include a PIN. This is one of the measures being taken so that if the card information is stolen it cannot be utilized without knowing the unique pin that is associated with the card (Mulligan, 2014). Target has offered free credit monitoring for its consumers as well as investing five million
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