Data Security

Personal information included on tax forms of Sprouts’ employees was compromised in a phishing scam. Last week, a payroll department employee at the company's headquarters in Arizona responded to an email thought to be from a company senior executive. In the email, the person asked for the 2015 W-2 statements of all Sprouts workers. The employee complied…

Avi Kaner, a co-owner of the Morton Williams supermarket chain in New York, has spent about $700,000 to update the payment terminals at his stores. Trouble is, he cannot turn them on. The new terminals can accept credit and debit cards with embedded digital chips, a security feature intended to reduce the number of fraudulent purchases. But before…

Amazon.com went down for some users on Thursday afternoon for approximately 20 minutes before being restored. Users trying to access the Amazon website as well as the mobile app at around 2:20 p.m. ET were greeted with error messages. During the outage, many users took to Twitter to vent their frustration.

From a revenue standpoint, what would you lose if your site was to go dark for 40 minutes? Where would your customers go? As we close the book on this past holiday season and look back on the e-commerce frenzy, I can’t help but reflect on this loss and how it might be avoided. To…

Looking back at 2015, we can all recall many large and well-publicized data breaches. In fact, retail breaches can almost seem like yesterday’s news compared to other high-profile incidents like Anthem, Premera and the OPM. Even so, retailers shouldn't become complacent and caught flatfooted. These attacks are spurring demand for increased regulation, pressure from merchant…

Home Depot agreed to pay at least $19.5 million to compensate U.S. consumers harmed by a 2014 data breach affecting more than 50 million cardholders. The home improvement retailer will set up a $13 million fund to reimburse shoppers for out-of-pocket losses, and spend at least $6.5 million to fund one-and-a-half years of cardholder identity protection…

In the afterglow of Valentine’s Day, many of us are thinking back on romantic dinners successfully booked, beautiful flower deliveries received and stunning diamond earnings gifted. Holidays like Valentine’s Day are some of the most crucial online traffic days for retailers and specialty stores. And it’s not just the big ones like Cyber Monday and…

The striking down of the existing Safe Harbor transatlantic data-transfer agreement has been all the talk of late. And while an agreement was finally reached – a new framework to be known as the EU-U.S. Privacy Shield – there are likely still hurdles to overcome before everything is finalized. Despite reaching this agreement, there may…

In today's age of advanced cyber threats and what seems to be near-daily data breaches, retailers have been forced to develop strategies and defense systems to combat fraudsters. In episode 23 of Total Retail Talks, Vincent Damiano, vice president of information security and compliance at Modell's Sporting Goods, discusses the steps his company has taken…

Independent business owners must constantly seek out business expense line items to minimize in order to keep costs low and preserve margin in an era of increasing local and global competition. Despite this constant pressure, however, a business owner can’t simply skimp on the quality or range of services offered to clients and customers without…