Athena Giokaris
HRM587
Week 6
Communicating the Change The Target Corporation has undergone many changes due to the 2013 security breach where hackers stole personal information from credit and debit cards of at least 70 million customers. Target sales and reputation has dropped from this instance, thus eliciting changes in their security systems, changes in management, and a few policy changes in handling customer information. With the public eye on the corporation’s handling of the situation, Target has been communicating these changes through various means. The changes they needed to communicate were informing customers of the security breach, addressing the bad press coverage to shareholders, downsizing of employees, and
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In a public statement regarding employee downsizing, they stated: "Target continually assesses our operating model to ensure we are well-positioned to adapt to changing business needs. ... We believe these decisions, while difficult, are the right actions as we continue to focus on transforming our business. We will continue to invest in key business areas to strengthen our ability to compete and thrive well into the future," Hammerand et al., 2014). Although they also stated that the downsizing is in no way a result from the data breach, it can be considered an indirect result of transforming the business, which was a result of the breach. It is known that Target informed their employees of the downsizing pursuant to media publicity, however it does not state which form of communication was used. I have created a sample e-mail notification to employees regarding this issue (See Target Downsizing Email). The statement above was my inspiration, as it describes the corporation’s views on the issue, although vaguely. I would have explained in more detail the reasons and steps taken for the layoffs so that the employees can understand the rationale behind the move.
Another stakeholder within the Target Corporation is its shareholders. They, too, have been affected by the security breach, in that the press coverage
1. McDonald’s Nutrition QR Code which will help customers gain access to nutritional facts about food via mobile devices
Even though Target is ranked currently 36 in the fortune 500 companies and have over 1750 stores, they are still very susceptible to being a victim of a cyber attack. In 2013, Target fell victim to a security breach on their system. Roughly around Thanksgiving of 2013, someone had installed malware in Target’s security and payment system enabling the hackers to steal credit card and personal information. “Six months earlier the company began installing a $1.6 million malware detection tool made by the computer security firm FireEye, whose customers also include the CIA and the Pentagon.” (BloombergBusiness) In place was a very effective security system. However, when the attacked happen on November 30, FireEye spotted the hackers and Bangalore (a third party cyber security company hired by Target) that alerted the IT team at corporate office in Minneapolis. There was no response from Target’s Corporate IT team and therefore led to 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers and other personal
Even though Target is ranked currently 36 in the fortune 500 companies and have over 1750 stores, they are still very susceptible to being a victim of a cyber attack. In 2013 Target fell victim to a security breach on their system. Roughly around Thanksgiving of 2013 someone had installed malware in Target’s security and payment system enabling the hackers to steal credit card and personal information. “Six months earlier the company began installing a $1.6 million malware detection tool made by the computer security firm FireEye, whose customers also include the CIA and the Pentagon.” (BloombergBusiness) In place was a very effective security system, but when the attacked happen on November 30, FireEye spotted the hackers and Bangalore, a third party cyber security company hired by Target alerted the IT team at corporate office in Minneapolis. There was no response from Target’s Corporate IT team and therefore led to the 40 million credit card numbers and 70 million addresses, phone numbers
During the last Christmas season, Target announced that their data security was breached. According to David Lazarus in Los Angeles Times, Target stated that roughly 110 million customers’ information was illegally taken from their database. The information included their credit/debit card info, phone numbers, and email addresses. Target is one of the most popular grocery stores in the U.S.; they have a substantial amount of consumers. Because of this incident, consumers' trusts for the store have been decreasing. Worrying about losing its customers, the company offered a free year of credit monitoring and identity-theft protection, so the customers will feel more secure. Not only Target, some other large retailers also faced the same issues. They want their customers to trust that the companies can protect private data. However, should we not worry? Data breaches have been going on for about a decade, but we have not seriously thought about the issue. In order to protect people’s privacy, the federal government should make new laws concerning companies’ handling of customer information.
Wells Fargo is one of the well-recognized banks in the United States with over 8,000 banks. Last year Wells Fargo paid millions of dollars in fines for opening around 1.5 million bank accounts and applied for around 560,000 credit cards without customers’ consent. Due to this unethical and illegal event, numerous stakeholders were affected. In the article, The Wal-Mart Effect and Business, Ethics, and Society by R. Edward Friedman, Friedman states that stakeholder is anyone who can be affected by the business or can affect the business (Friedman 38). A great deal stakeholders were affected by the Wells Fargo crisis including Board of Directors, stockholders, employees, and the customers. Each stakeholder has different interests,
The Security breach that hit Target in 2014 was one of the worst ever. It exposed names, addresses, phone numbers, credit and debit cards information’s of 70 million customers. Target informed that all transactions and customers’ information between Nov.27 to Dec. 15 2014 were stolen on the attack by hackers. This attack affect millions and the giant store as well losing money when their sales declined to 2.5 percent. Target had to email all affected customers and help all of them with their own credit monitoring by offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection and also make them no liable to any fraudulent purchase after the breach. It was a big deal and it was all over the news. Two suggestions I would give is one, add a protocol
Although Target provides superior quality and ideal customer services, the company is still face with risk and threats. The threats of Target consist of:
Target faces a major problem that many other organizations are facing, keeping consumer information private. Protecting consumer information is becoming more complicated due to the increase of technology available to those looking to steal their information. In order to create a solution to this problem an organizational development intervention would need to occur at a team level. The team level is the most appropriate level due to the fact that for a major technological change to occur across the whole organization it would involve analysis of the team not one individual (South University Online, 2015, para. 2). A technology breach would
One of the largest examples of a technological privacy violation in history was the Target data breach of 2013. The Target Corporation is one of the leading innovators of the retail industry. They introduced the concept of designer partnerships, making them one of the leading clothing stores in the country (Corporate Target 1). Unfortunately, the company was targeted by Russian hackers shortly before the Christmas of 2013. In this hack, personal information, including customer names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, email addresses and credit card information, of seventy million people was stolen and used for fraud (Forbes 1). This has raised concerns over how well the company can ensure that their consumer’s privacy is protected.
The Home Depot and Target have been one of the many retail establishments cyber attack breaches that have being targeted by cyber attackers. The Home Depot was the target of a cyberattack payment card system breach where their credit card information was basically stolen on September of 2014. The attacked occurred by attackers gaining third party credentials in order to gain access to the system, after they gained access to the system they weakened the system gaining their own access privileges. After doing all the mentioned above, malware was installed quickly on Home Depot’s self-check-out system. All these steps where taking by the cyber attackers resulting in the loss of more than fifty million credit card accounts and email addresses.
Target a large retail corporation that operates over 1,700 stores across the United States. They also operate as an online retailer at target.com. In 2012 the retailer earned more than $73 billion dollars in revenue and grew their sales by 5.1% from the previous year. Looking at the revenue and sales growth rate it is hard to fathom that more money could not be spent to ensure that consumer data is protected as much as possible. As information security specialists one of the worst things that can happen is our network gets infiltrated and customer information is stolen. On December 19, 2013 Target released a statement stating that they have had an information
Target has not disclosed much detail around the breach due to liability and legal issues but some information is available due to a leaked internal corporate report. The report included information by Verizon which was hired by Target to probe its networks for weaknesses days after the breach was
In December 2013, Target was attacked by a cyber-attack due to a data breach. Target is a widely known retailer that has millions of consumers flocking every day to the retailer to partake in the stores wonders. The Target Data Breach is now known as the largest data breach/attack surpassing the TJX data breach in 2007. “The second-biggest attack struck TJX Companies, the parent company of TJMaxx and Marshall’s, which said in 2007 that about 45 million credit cards and debit cards had been compromised.” (Timberg, Yang, & Tsukayama, 2013) The data breach occurred to Target was a strong swift kick to the guts to not only the retailer/corporation, but to employees and consumers. The December 2013 data breach, exposed Target in a way that many
After reading the article about the Target data security breach and how Target handled the PR, I agree with the author’s stance on how bad Target handled the PR of the data security breach. Target didn’t tell anyone about the data security breach even though they knew, instead someone else broke the story. Target did the opposite of the five principles of crisis communication, Target knew about the issue but wasn’t prepared to go public with it or communicate the issue with the press and other constituencies, and be honest to the public about what is going on. Instead, somebody else had to break the news. Also, Target wasn’t clear what it was doing to remedy the issue and didn’t mean it instead Target states the typical speech every company makes “we are taking this issue seriously”.
Today, we live in a technologically based world in which almost everything we do is done through computer-based technology. Communication, marketing, and even transactions are all done through technology. The danger of having all of your information online is that once something is on the internet, it is permanent. Whether it be your home address, phone number, or simply pictures of you and your family, you can never really remove anything. This can be both positive and negative. Negative because if your information slips into the wrong hands you can get into trouble. And this can be positive because with all kinds of people around the world posting information on the internet, it brings everyone a little closer together, making it easier to connect with people from all over the globe. One negative effect of the internet making the world a smaller place was Target’s data breach a few years back. In mid-December of 2013, Target experienced a crisis when criminals had forced their way into Target’s system, gaining access to many guests credit and debit card information. As the investigation continued, it was later determined that certain guest information, such as names, mailing addresses, email addresses and phone numbers were taken as well. Target has built its reputation of customer satisfaction over the years by providing excellent service to customers and having better discounts than their competitors,