Recent Lessons In Preparing For And Responding To Security Breaches

Target recently acknowledged that it suffered a massive security breach over the holiday season between November 27 and December 15.  The result of the breach was that over 110 million credit and debit accounts which include customer names, credit and debit card numbers, card expiration dates and the three-digit security codes were stolen.

It was discovered during the investigation into the breach that the security breach was caused by a sophisticated malware that had the ability to infect individual point of sale devices, monitor data processes on the devices, then transmit the data outside of the retailer. The sophistication of the malware caused the U.S. Homeland Security to issue a warning to retailers.