Home Depot To Pay $19.5 Million In Data Breach Settlement

Home Depot has settled a consumer lawsuit filed in the wake of its massive 2014 data breach that exposed payment card information of about 40 million customers and email addresses of up to 53 million people.

Terms of the initial agreement were disclosed earlier this month in court papers filed in a federal court in Atlanta, according to a Reuters report. The home improvement chain's settlement totals at least $19.5 million -- $13 million of which will compensate shoppers for the losses in connection with the data breach and around $6.5 million for identity protection services for 1 1/2 years for the cardholders.

Home Depot also pledged to beef up its data security over the a span of two years and to hire a CISO. "We wanted to put the litigation behind us, and this was the most expeditious path," Home Depot spokesman Stephen Holmes told Reuters. "Customers were never responsible for any fraudulent charges."

According to Reuters, at least 57 class-action lawsuits were filed in US and Canadian courts; the US cases were combined in the case in Atlanta.

See the Reuters article for more details.