Welcome to the "Data Breach Ripples" for the week of November 24, 2014. In this week’s issue, we cover the growing list of civil suits facing Home Depot, the recent cyber attack on Sony Pictures and retailers shifting their focus to protecting consumers’ data.
Home Depot Facing At Least 44 Civil Suits in Data Breach
In a recent report by Fox Business, Home Depot announced yesterday that the home improvement retailer is currently facing at least 44 civil lawsuits in Canada and the United States following their massive data breach. Last week, Home Depot reported $28 million dollars in pretax expenses following the data breach that compromised 56 million payment cards in North America. For more info on the Home Depot data breach, check out our blog post here.
Sony Suffers Another Data Breach
On November 24th, hackers were able to gain access to Sony Pictures’ systems and were able to render its website unusable for a period of time. While the motives behind this recent attack are still unclear, CSO Online points out that the cybercriminals involved may have been after valuable data and information that Sony possesses. At this time, it appears that no personal or financial information was stolen, but this is not the first time Sony has been a victim of a data breach. In 2011, Sony’s Playstation Network (PSN) was hacked and the personal information of 77 million users was compromised.
Retailers Focus on Protecting Consumer data and Upping Security Measures
As retailers, issuers, and cardholders prepare for the holiday shopping season, cybersecurity is a growing concern for all parties involved. In a report by The Detroit News,over $4 billion USD was spent to protect organizations and consumers in 2014 according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey with expectations of that spending to increase by half in 2017.
Thanks for reading this week’s “Data Breach Ripples” and we hope that you and your family and friends had a fantastic Thanksgiving weekend! If you missed last week’s email or want to share these with friends or colleagues, click here.