Target breach could cost hundreds of millions, probe starts

The theft of credit and debit card data from 40 million Target Corp customers could end up costing hundreds of millions of dollars, but it is unclear who will bear the expense, lawyers and industry sources said. Target said on Thursday hackers had stolen the data of shoppers who visited its stores during the first three weeks of the holiday season. For big data breaches, the total cost typically amounts to about $17 per account, said Larry Ponemon, whose Ponemon Institute researches data breaches. For the Target breach, that would bring the total cost of the incident to somewhere around $680 million.



via Tech News Headlines - Yahoo News http://news.yahoo.com/target-breach-could-cost-hundreds-millions-probe-starts-025316262--sector.html