This week Target settled a dispute with MasterCard over a 2013 data breach by agreeing to pay $19M to card issuers worldwide that have to cancel accounts, create new accounts, and reissue new cards to customers who were affected.
The person responsible for this huge attack has not been caught yet and had access to 110 million customer records, including 40 million credit card numbers. Target notified card issuers immediately after the attack so customers could get new cards quickly and accounts back to normal.
Visa is in talks with Target for a smaller settlement.
It seems this is happening more and more lately with large multibillion dollar companies with robust IT departments and presumably very good data security measures to combat this. When one hacker or a small group of hackers relatively easily breaks the system and gets access to sensitive information this becomes real to me as a consumer with lots of information in the virtual world and on company servers.
I want to trust that companies are doing all that they can to combat this type of thing, but when you are seemingly getting nipped at weekly, maybe even daily, by those that wish to steal from others instead of working for themselves, it scares me into becoming extra careful when I put my credit card or social into any website. I suppose this is good that my senses are heightened to this so I do take more responsibility and not blindly trust who is on the other end of my transaction.
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