On December 19th Target revealed that 40 million credit and debit card accounts were compromised by a data breach. The information had appeared to be stole around black friday of 2013. This is the busiest shopping day of the year.The retailer said that the information stolen between November 27 and December 15, 2013 included personal information of as many as 70 million people more than the 40 million the company originally estimated. Target discovered the breach on December 13th and notified the justice department.The information stolen included names, mailing addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. The hackers tole 11 Gb worth of personal information. Target said that it will provide one year of free credit monitoring …show more content…
This means the breach is much bigger than the holiday attack on Target. This attack highlighted the vulnerability of U.S. retailers to hackers that have been targeting their system for payment. Home Depot began to fully encrypt its payment terminal this year. But the hackers hacked first.The company said Thursday that the terminals are now encrypted.Although the number of affected cards wasn't disclosed before, the attack already has appeared large enough for big card-issuing banks such as J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. to start replacing customers' debit and credit cards that were exposed in the attack. Home Depot has agreed to pay at least $19.5 million to compensate U.S. customers harmed by the 2014 data breach affecting more than 50 million cardholders. Home Depot also agreed to improve data security over a two-year period. They also said they would hire a chief information security officer to oversee its data security. It will separately pay legal fees and related costs for affected consumers.At least 57 class action lawsuits were filed in U.S. courts over the data breach. The U.S. cases were resolved in the Atlanta