Thursday, March 13, 2014

Target Data Breach: Bloomberg's Breached Whaleofatale

Bloomberg has an excellent article on the Target data security breach. Well-researched at what must have been considerable cost, published free on the Internet -- capitalism at its finest.

And a whale of a tale it is.

It reads like a Tom Clancy novel.

(photo illustration from Bloomberg article)

It appears that Target ignored the warning signs. Here is Target's Big Cheese (Chairman, President, CEO)'s impeccably crafted but utterly inadequate response:
Target was certified as meeting the standard for the payment card industry (PCI) in September 2013. Nonetheless, we suffered a data breach. As a result, we are conducting an end-to-end review of our people, processes and technology to understand our opportunities to improve data security and are committed to learning from this experience. While we are still in the midst of an ongoing investigation, we have already taken significant steps, including beginning the overhaul of our information security structure and the acceleration of our transition to chip-enabled cards. However, as the investigation is not complete, we don’t believe it’s constructive to engage in speculation without the benefit of the final analysis.
What he should have said was, "we messed up. We are making it right".

You can read the article here.

And that's the way the Ball bounces.

PS. My debit account was linked to the US Target Debit Red Card, so I was compromised. How were you affected by the Target Data Breach?
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"... nothing intellectually compelling or challenging.. bald assertions coupled to superstition... woefully pathetic"