Fewer than half of security professionals believe that the Target breach has had an impact upon their business.
In a survey conducted at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas this month, 42 per cent of 215 respondents said that the Target breach had a greater impact on their security budgets. 31 per cent said the Target breach had a greater influence on their executives’ security awareness, more than the Snowden leaks or the increase in targeted threats. Only 22 per cent said that targeted threats had a greater impact on their security budget.
Dwayne Melancon, chief technology officer for Tripwire, who conducted the survey, said that executives and businesses tend to be swayed by the most recent information security events. “The responses to this survey are consistent with that behaviour, and it’s a reminder that we all tend to relax our vigilance and become complacent over time. Instead of focusing on the latest breach headlines, I recommend that each organisation focus on the equivalent of the Target breach for their specific business,” he said.
As news has broken of another point-of-sale malware intrusion and breach at UPS, a report by Forbesclaimed that as well as impacting share prices by around 20 cents a share, the breach is impacting customer confidence in the company, which is making it difficult for Target to attract customers.
In its recent update, the company guided its Q2 comparable store sales to remain flat with weaker-than-expected earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) margins, on account of traffic driving promotional activities.
