It happened again. Another major corporation got hacked. This time it was Home Depot, and it wasn’t pocket change.
Back on September 8, Home Depot confirmed over 56 million credit/debit cards may have been compromised between April and September 2014. Home Depot franchises throughout the US and Canada are affected.? According to a Home Depot spokesperson, hackers used homemade software to cover their tracks. Home Depot has been cyber attacked before, and the culprits didn’t want to use the same malware again to evade accountability. But the thing that got me was Home Depot had warnings. After last year’s hacks, the company’s security agents warned the company to strengthen it’s cyber defense. All they had to do was use a certain security software feature that would have added protection to cashier aisles when customers’ cards were swiped. And this is in their own documents.? During the Sept. 8 confirmation, they revealed after the mass hacking, consumers’ information was put on the cyber black market for sale. While the malware that caused this was found and taken out, Home Depot is looking at a $62 million dollar bill to recover this mess.
Now, they’re talking about a security project that will enhance major encryption in US and Canadian stores. Too bad for Canadian stores that they won’t have this encryption until early 2015. I’m glad something is being done now, but for 56 million accounts, it’s too little too late. What makes this more frustrating is that Home Depot had a chance to make their cyber security systems stronger, but didn’t. Would it have totally prevented this crime? That’s debatable. But some security experts say it would have eliminated 95% of the threat. But the point is, I’d rather have them implement extra security measures and have nothing happen than fail to heed the warnings and have this happen. Shouldn’t the powers that be at Home Depot be ashamed of themselves?