Epsilon Breach May Finally Force Data Handling Rule Changes—And It’s Only About Five Years Late
Written by Evan SchumanApril 6th, 2011
The massive Epsilon E-mail data breach—which has sent to cyberthieves E-mail addresses from the files of Target, Best Buy, Kroger, Walgreens, Home Depot Credit Card, HSN, Marks and Spencer, New York & Co., Brookstone, Eddie Bauer, Ethan Allen, Fry's Electronics and countless other retailers—may be what finally pushes chains to insist that PCI-like rules be applied to all corporate information and not merely payment data.
Epsilon is merely the latest in a series of publicized, highly embarrassing incidents for retailers where they are taking a consumer black eye for breaches, ethically questionable activities or gaping security holes that were entirely handled by third parties. Whether it's supply-chain management holes perpetrated on a multi-billion-dollar retail chain, SEO efforts against JCPenney or data-backup screw-ups that crippled the American Eagle Outfitter's site for eight days, retail IT execs are learning that as long as they are going to be blamed for what third-parties do in their names, they might as well take a much more active role in beefing up protection of all customer data.
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Our Comment SPAM system is getting very aggressive these days and has been blocking legitimate comments. If you post a comment and don't see it appear within 2 hours or so, can you please send a heads-up to customer-service@storefrontbacktalk.com? Ideally, please include the time you posted the comment. That will allow us to try and hunt for it. Thanks! P.S. We're working on fixing the system, but we don't want to lose any valuable comments in the meantime.
I have strong reservations about the 'individual' certification and posting of that information for merchants. Can you imagine the potential employee poaching that might occur? The implications when competitors can look up how many are certified with each of their competitors? 
-Christine
