When Hit With A Major Data Breach, Retailers Should Use The Buddy System
Written by Evan SchumanSeptember 16th, 2009
There's a very old joke that when swimmers are about to go into shark-invested waters, they should always swim with a buddy. If a shark attacks, feed him your buddy. Retailers today, swimming in cyberthief-invested wireless zones, are discovering a similar guideline plays out when there is an attack against a large number of retailers, such as what happened with TJX, Hannaford, 7-Eleven and others in the Gonzalez cases.
Despite those heavy-weight retail brands, only a couple have borne the vast majority of the costs and headaches associated with a breach. Why? Because the first one or two chains have to go through the expense of identifying the breached numbers and having them shut down and reissued. That task's completion makes life so much easier on the others. It's also better for investigative costs, brand reputation and several other factors. Is this fair? Can and should something be done to make it more equitable?
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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? 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.
Is there really an improvement between a mag swipe and contactless tap if multi-factor authentication is required?
-Ed
