The 7 Biggest Security Breaches in Corporate History

As more people rely electronic payments and Internet transactions, the more information is out there for unscrupulous individuals to steal.

TJX Companies

The parent company of TJ Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods and A.J. Wright stores, TJX Companies Inc., announced in 2007 that its computer system had been hacked and that the personal information of approximately 45.7 million customers had been compromised over a span of nearly two years. TJX has since spent upwards of $5 million towards improving security, investigation, and customer notification. Costs for TJX are likely to increase given the multiple lawsuits the company is facing.

Pfizer Inc.

In 2007 the pharmaceutical giant admitted that the personal information of almost 17,000 of its past and present employees may have been compromised. Pfizer said that the security breach occurred after a company laptop was taken home by an employee and P2P file sharing software was installed on it. This software led to the theft of the personal information.

Heartland Payment Systems Inc.

One of the largest data thefts of all time happened when Heartland, a credit card processing company that handled approximately 100 million credit card transactions each month, was hit by a large security breach in 2009. Three men were indicted later in August for stealing more than 130 million credit cards numbers from Heartland, 7-Eleven, and other companies.

Apple

The cutting edge technology company is known for wowing customers with its products, but in 2010 a number of Apple users were stunned when it was revealed that early users of the iPad had their information compromised. According to Business Insider, in 2010 more than 100,000 iPad users had their user accounts compromised. The news source said that this included a lot of high-profile users of the tablet, and was likely the fault of AT&T.

Epsilon

The email marketing provider had its databases hacked in April of this year, according to DigitalTrends. Epsilon’s clients include Citigroup, L.L. Bean and Visa, and it said that it had reason to believe that the data of some of its client’s customers may have been stolen. However, the investigation into the security breach is still ongoing.

Sony

The Sony PlayStation hack made headlines worldwide recently. What first appeared to be a power outage of the gaming console’s online network turned out to be much more serious as it was revealed that some of the network’s 70 million users’ credit card information may have been stolen. The breach has undoubtedly cost Sony a pretty penny since it brought down the Playstation Network for almost two months during efforts to repair the damage done.

Bank of America

Security breaches can affect companies of any size, as the case of Bank of America illustrates. In 2011 an employee of the bank leaked account information to scam artists, which resulted in losses of $10 million. Most of the affected consumers are in western states like California. This just goes to show that