Retail Hacking: What To Expect This Holiday Season

Call it The Year of the Retail Breach.

It's been one year since Target suffered a massive data breach of 40 million customer credit and debit card numbers in an attack that rocked both the retail industry and consumer world. Target was only the beginning of what ultimately became a string of major hacks against big-name retailers that resulted in the theft of millions of customer payment card accounts. The list included Neiman Marcus, Michael's, Sally Beauty, P.F. Chang's, Dairy Queen, UPS, JimmyJohn's, Staples, and Home Depot, which all came clean this past year with breach disclosures. And it's very likely there are many more retailers that haven't yet disclosed attacks, as well as others that may not yet know.

Now that the holiday season is about to kick off both online and in brick-and-mortar stores, is yet another wave of attacks imminent? Not only is it prime shopping season, but it's also the time of year when retailers institute their annual "freeze" on new technology and some security patching to avoid disruption to their busiest and most lucrative revenue-generating time of the year, a strategy that could leave some stores even more at risk.

[After the Year of the Retail Breach, retail's annual holiday shopping season "freeze" on new technology and some security patching is just around the corner. Read Retailers Facing Intensified Cyberthreat This Holiday Season.]

Join us on Wednesday, November 19 at 1:00 p.m. ET (10:00 a.m. PT), when I will host the next episode of Dark Reading Radio, where we will explore the threats to holiday shoppers and retailers, and what retailers are doing (or not) to keep their systems and customers safe from cybercrime. My guests will be Nick Pelletier, senior consultant with Mandiant, who has conducted forensic investigations for retailers and other high-profile breach targets, and Arthur Tisi, co-founder and CEO at The Praescripto Group LLC, and former CIO for Natural Markets Food Group, who also serves as an advisor to the retail industry.

So register here now to listen to the broadcast next week. Have questions for our guests? Share them in the comments section below, or bring them along to the show. Both Nick and Arthur will join us in a live text chat following the broadcast, where you can ask them your burning questions about the upcoming holiday shopping cyberthreats.