The growing risk of cyber threats is continuing to become more apparent. On September 8, Home Depot confirmed reports that their payment system’s security had been breached. This breach could potentially affect more than the 70 million customers affected in the Target incident of a similar nature in November 2013, which is currently the largest retail breach to date.
It is reported that the personal records of Home Depot shoppers could have been compromised dating back as far as April. These records were obtained from their 2,000-plus locations in the United States.
By comparison, Target has spent over $140 million since their security breach, mainly from settling fraudulent card claims from customers impacted, so it is reasonable to conclude that a similar amount will be incurred by Home Depot. The chain has already promised that any potentially impacted customers will receive free identity-theft protection, including a credit monitoring service, applied to their account to ensure peace of mind.
Data breaches, like those at Home Depot and Target, continue to occur every single day. But it is not just retail stores that are affected. According to a report from the United States Government Accountability Office, the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team stated there was a 782 percent increase in cyber incidents reported from 2006-2012. These incidents affect many industries including healthcare organizations, educational institutions, consumer websites and even the government.
As prevalent as cyber threats are, fortunately, so are various products and services used to circumvent and/or mitigate the damages.
In the United States, the average organization will spend over $5.4 million per data breach encountered.
Root causes for data breaches vary; but according to data from the Ponemon Institute, 42 percent are caused via malicious or criminal intent. With those staggering stats in mind, SRC Cyber created an infographic depicting a few infamous cyber incidents in the past decade and their global impact on the cybersecurity industry.
For nearly a decade, Matt Sweeney, Product, SRC Cyber, has dedicated himself to developing novel cyber threat detection and computational reasoning technologies. He is responsible for the technical direction and product development for cybersecurity analytics platforms. Matt is a sought-after speaker as an industry expert in the areas of risk assessment, cyber observable analysis and data mining, artificial intelligence, knowledge representation and reasoning, natural language processing and insider threats.