Tjx Company Breach

T.J Maxx Breach

By Richard Redman

IFSM 304 SECTION 6381

30 August 2013

Introduction

T.J Maxx is also known as TJ’s or the Maxx. It is an American department chain store that belongs to TJX Companies. It is a major retailer that deals with clothes and has more than nine hundred stores. It was created in Framingham as a nameplate of the Zayre discount department store chain. Zayre later on changed to TJX Companies. TJX then opened their first chain store in the year 1994. They later on changed the name TJX to T.K. Maxx. This was done in order to avoid any mystification with the recognized British vendor chain TJ Hughes. T.J Maxx contributes to charity work by supporting Save the Children campaign. Each store belonging to T.J Maxx espouses a child (Jack, 2008).

In the year 2007, T.J Maxx received some setbacks through a computer security breach. Hackers were able to access information regarding debit card accounts and also credit card accounts. They were able to view transactions that had taken place since the year 2003 on January. This led to the company being sued by various parties including banks like Connecticut Associated Banks. The breach however, led to the arrest of someone known as Albert Gonzalez who had stolen credit card details from a number of companies for example T.J Maxx. The culprit had also stolen debit card details of the same companies which led to him serving twenty years in a centralized prison (Abol, 2012).

T.J Maxx Breach

As stated earlier, T.J Maxx experienced a major security breach that involved hacking of its computer system. This led to retrieval of close to forty five million credit cards and debit cards. A great number of those cards had already expired by the time the breach occurred. TJX was however, uncertain of whether the data that is available on the magnetic strips had been veiled. TJX reported that the first breach occurred in the year 2005 on July by either a hacker or hackers who managed to access information from customer dealings that had occurred as late as the year 2003 on January. TJX also reported that the hackers stole Information on transactions from 45.7 million cards starting from January 2003 to November twenty third in the same year. Investigations into the breach came up with a report that indicated that there were three major loopholes that led to the breach. The company might have had an insufficient wireless network security. The company might have also been vulnerable due to inappropriate storage of data that belonged to its customers. Lastly, the company might have been vulnerable since it failed to encrypt account data of its clients. I shall now look