Following the theft of almost 40 million credit card records, giant retailer Target Corp apologizes in its attempt to get customers back, according to a Reuters report.
On Monday, January 13, the retail giant apologized to its customers for a massive cyber-attack on its network November of last year that jeopardized credit information of customers.
Target disclosed that breach began late in November and lasted for 19 days during the peak of the holiday shopping season, the report said. The theft amounted to almost 40 million credit card records together with 70 million more on records that contain customer data.
The system breach resulted in drop in sales at the end of the holiday season that prompted Target to launch a campaign to get its customers back. The campaign included a full-page advertisement in which the retail giant apologized for the cyber-attack, and an interview of Gregg Steinhafel, Target's CEO.
"We're going to get to the bottom of this," Steinhafel told CNBC in an interview. "We're not going to rest until we understand what happened and how that happened."
During the interview, Steinhafel confirmed that the breach happened on December 15, 2013. However, Target declined to say when exactly it became suspicious that its systems might have been compromised.
According to Reuters sources familiar with the investigation, Target only learned about the breach after it received warnings from financial industry sources. It reported a surge in fraudulent credit card activity from customer accounts who had shopped at Target.
Neiman Marcus, another retailer, said on Friday, January 10, that it also received warnings about a possible breach sometime mid-December last year. On January 1, an outside forensic firm found evidence that some payment card data may have also been compromised.
Target and Neiman Marcus are, so far, the only two retailers that have disclosed information on getting attacked. However, experts believe that there are other U.S. retailers whose networks were also breached during the holiday season.
