Small businesses everywhere are taking better steps toward guarding against data breaches after Target has been heavily under attack in the news from the recent massive data breach. While most companies would like say they’re doing all they can to prevent a data breach, the majority are still at a high risk.
Just weeks after the enormous data breach that affected 110 million Target customers, Neiman Marcus announced a it also had a data breach and several shoppers could be in danger of credit card fraud, reported Info World.
The high-end retailer is investigating a data breach that happened in December 2013 and resulted in stolen card numbers from its merchant card processor. Neiman Marcus is currently working with the U.S. Secret Service and a forensics firm to investigate the data breach.
“Neiman Marcus was informed by our credit card processor in mid-December of potentially unauthorized payment card activity that occurred following customer purchases at our Neiman Marcus Group stores,” said Ginger Reeder in the company’s formal statement, according to KrebsOnSecurity. “We informed federal law enforcement agencies and are working actively with the U.S. Secret Service, the payment brands, our credit card processor, a leading investigations, intelligence and risk management firm and a leading forensics firm to investigate the situation.”
No release on amount affected
Neiman Marcus found evidence on Jan. 1, that the company was the victim of a criminal cyber security intrusion and it’s possible some customer cards were possibly compromised in the process, reported Info World. The company is still unsure how the security breach happened or how many consumers were affected. The retailer did say that some of the customers’ credit cards were used improperly after shopping at one of the stores.
Data breach incidents are causing a lot of buzz around the nation and customers are concerned about how to protect their credit card and personal information. The Target data breach was originally at 40 million affected customers, but it has since gone up to 110 million affected customers, which is nearly one-third of the U.S. population, according to Info World.
Neiman Marcus made an announcement via Twitter on Jan. 10, and said that they were taking steps to notify customers whose cards they know were fraudulently used after making purchases at one of the stores, reported Info World.
Neiman Marcus also announced that the hackers have obtained the names, phone numbers, mailing addresses and email addresses for at least 70 million customers, reported KrebsOnSecurity. With even large corporations counting themselves as data breach victims, Small businesses can protect themselves with business insurance and professional liability insurance to help them through a data breach incident.
