Adidas Warns Millions of U.S. Customers About a Potential Data Breach
Adidas has warned millions of U.S. customers of a potential data breach. The athletic wear company announced in a press release on Thursday that an “unauthorized party” claims to have acquired customer data from its U.S. website. According to a preliminary investigation conducted by outside data security firms and law enforcement, the leaked data is believed to be limited in scope, including contact information, usernames and encrypted passwords, but not credit card data. Adidas first became aware of the security issue on June 26, but did not say when the breach occurred.
Total Retail's Take: Once again we're reminded of how critical data security is, as well as having a plan in place should a breach occur — which is now more a matter of when rather than if. While the full scope of this latest breach isn't yet known, or at least been reported, Adidas does get credit for quickly alerting customers that may have been potentially impacted by the breach, which occurred on the brand's website. With more and more shopping and purchasing taking place online, the reality is that the opportunity for cybercriminals continues to grow by the day. Data security is just as important to a retailer's business today as is inventory, supply chain, customer service, marketing, you name it. The real impact of a data breach may not be immediate — although still expensive and unwanted — but months and years after the incident in the form of lost consumer trust. According to a recent KPMG study, 55 percent of consumers surveyed globally have decided against purchasing something online due to privacy concerns. Here's some content from Total Retail that can help to make your retail business — online and in-store — more secure.
“Retail websites have become a fertile hunting ground for attackers targeting customer data," says Fred Kneip, CEO, CyberGRX. "Even when organizations do everything they can do safeguard their data, attackers have gotten very good at going through third parties to find a way in. Just this week we saw Ticketmaster breached through a vulnerability with a chatbot vendor, causing sensitive data to be leaked. The Under Armour attack earlier this year was executed through a vulnerability with its MyFitnessPal app. The Fort Knox approach of making your organization impenetrable simply doesn’t work today because so many third parties have access to your network. It only takes a single vulnerability within any of those third parties to put sensitive data at risk.”
