Target CEO Gregg Steinhafel's resignation Monday as president, CEO and chairman of the Board of the company likely isn't a sign that boards of directors are now holding chief executives accountable for massive data breaches.
While some observers quickly linked Steinhafel's exit with the breach, his departure likely has more to do with Target's botched expansion in Canada, analysts said.
Target said Thursday it investigated but ultimately dismissed early signs of a data breach, a decision it likely regrets after suffering one of the largest payment-card and personal-data breaches on record.
The retailer said it logs a vast number of technical events each week, and “a small amount of [the criminals’] activity was logged and surfaced to our team. That activity was evaluated and acted upon,” Molly Snyder, a Target spokeswoman, said in an emailed statement on Thursday.
Target CIO Beth Jacob has apparently fallen on her sword in the wake of the massive security breach in mid-December that compromised 40 million debit and credit cards and swept national headlines. Her resignation was rendered this week effective immediately.
"If you look at the history of other large data breaches, turnover at the top of the IT shop is not unusual," says retail IT consultant Cathy Hotka.
Target is still reeling from the massive security breach, which affected as many as 110 million customers. Now, as the retailer gets back on its feet, it's becoming more security focused.
Target Chief Financial Officer John Mulligan wrote an opinion piece for The Hill on Monday saying that the company was speeding up its implementation of high-security credit cards.
Target said Wednesday that intruders accessed its systems by using credentials "stolen" from a vendor, one of the first details the retailer has revealed about how hackers got inside.
The vendor was not identified. A Target spokeswoman said she had no further details to share.
Recent massive data breaches at Target and Neiman Marcus have re-ignited a campaign by retailers to get U.S. consumers to carry "PIN and chip" credit and debit cards to replace the decades-old magnetic stripe cards used by 90% of Americans.
Such PIN and chip cards would do what dozens of newer-model smartphones with NFC chips are already doing while using payment apps like Google Wallet and Isis. So why isn't the focus on promoting near-field communication smartphones instead of PIN and chip cards?
Two Mexican nationals have been arrested in Texas after they allegedly attempted to enter the U.S. with fraudulent credit cards that could be tied to the massive Target data breach.
Officers with U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrested Mary Carmen Vaquera Garcia and Daniel Dominguez Guardiola, both of Monterrey, Mexico, on Sunday at a bridge connecting Mexico and the U.S., according to a news release.
Independent security journalist Brian Krebs has uncovered important new details about the hack that compromised as many as 110 million Target customers, including the malware that appears to have infected point-of-sale systems and the way attackers first broke in.
