Personalities
After data breach US retailer Target is naming new IT Officer
A veteran U.S. government adviser is to lead Target Corporation’s technology team following the massive data breach of last year that enabled one of the largest credit card thefts in corporate history
Bob DeRhodes, who was formerly a senior information technology adviser for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Secretary of Defence, and the Justice Department, will become U.S. retailer Target’s chief information officer as of May 5, 2014
Target also announced that its store-branded debit and credit cards will be enabled with MasterCard Inc.’s chip and PIN technology early next year. Existing Visa Inc. cards will be switched over to the MasterCard network.
As you might recall, TextileFuture reported on Target’s and other American retailers data breach (see News of January 14, 2014), in which 40 million credit- and de-bit card numbers were stolen in the weeks before the yearend holidays in America. Target disclosed in January 2014 that hackers had stolen such personal information as addresses and phone numbers of up to 70 million customers. Later the company communicated that at least 12 million shoppers had both their credit card and some personal information stolen and the overlap is likely greater. Early March 2014 the former chief information officer Beth Jacobs resigned and was the first high profile executive to depart after the breach.
DeRhodes will now oversee Target’s technology team and operations, along with the ongoing data security enhancement efforts, as well as the development of Target’s long term information technology and digital roadmap. The company is further searching for a chief information security officer (a newly created position) and a chief compliance officer. Target’s CEO Gregg Steinhafel stated: “I believe Target has a tremendous opportunity to take the lessons learned from this incident and enhance our overall approach to data security and information technology.”
Other disclosed data breaches in recent months are retailers Michaels Stores Inc. and Neiman Marcus Group, while AOL Inc. stated last Monday that it is investigating a security incident involving unauthorised accessed to a significant number of user accounts, and Microsoft Corp. admitted last Sunday that it had discovered a flaw in versions 6 to 11 of its Internet Explorer web browser, as well “as limited targeted attacks” to exploit the flaw. The American government has been warning of the dangerous flaw and recommended not to use the Internet Explorer for some days and to switch to alternative web browser systems.