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The Identity Theft of Home Depot

The Home Depot suffered a major data breach in 2014 affecting over 50 million customers. Hackers were able to steal customer payment card and personal information from Home Depot's point-of-sale systems by exploiting credentials of a vendor. Two former Home Depot employees were sentenced to prison for their role in stealing employee personal information. The breach ultimately cost Home Depot $179 million to pay for damages, legal fees, and credit monitoring services.

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270 views4 pages

The Identity Theft of Home Depot

The Home Depot suffered a major data breach in 2014 affecting over 50 million customers. Hackers were able to steal customer payment card and personal information from Home Depot's point-of-sale systems by exploiting credentials of a vendor. Two former Home Depot employees were sentenced to prison for their role in stealing employee personal information. The breach ultimately cost Home Depot $179 million to pay for damages, legal fees, and credit monitoring services.

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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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The Identity Theft of Home Depot

Home Depot has been known form being the best superstore in hardware and lawncare

equipment. There are 2,317 Home Depot stores that are open worldwide. There are competitors

like Lowes and Ace, but Home Depot continues to thrive and be the best hardware superstore

around.

The identity theft of Home Depot occurred when the cyberattack was conducted using

credentials that had been stolen from one of the retailer's vendors. The credentials were used to

gain access to the network; the attackers then elevated the privileges. Then they more laterally

till the were able to find what they were looking for (The POS System).

The duo responsible for this $179 million breach is Paulette Shorter and Lakisha Grimes.

They were sentenced to federal prison for the acts of stealing personal identifying information

from the fellow Home Depot employees. Shorter and Grimes were once former employees of

Home Depot. They had worked in Human Resources in Atlanta, Georgia the headquarters of

Home Depot. They had access to the employees’ names, birth dates, and social security numbers.

The company Home Depot inc. was ultimately at fault for the identity theft data breach in

2014 that put them back $179 million. There was no real hack into the system that gave access to

the data. But the duo of Shorter and Grimes were already high up in the ranks to be given the

information. So, there was no true hack, but the company had the access open to the human

resources.

The Home Depot identity theft data breach of 2014 ending up making them pay $179

million is the largest retail data breach involving a point-of-sale system. A download called
Malware, this allowed cyber criminals to steal 50 million credit card numbers and 53 million

email addresses from customers. More than 50 million people were affected by this data breach

that affected both Americans and Canadians as well. The software Malware was the same

software that was used to data breach Target.

Home Depot was hit the hardest out of the whole breach. They had to pay the customers

$19.5 million in damages that happened because of the breach. The large payout also covers the

cost of providing credit monitoring services to the customers. But that is not all Home Depot had

to pay, the banks were hit hard losing millions of dollars out of nowhere, so home depot had to

pay banks and credit card companies $134.5 million. There was no way of the customers being

able to protect themselves from such breach because, it was leaked through the human services

department which holds all the customer data and information.

Home Depot has since improved their cyber security protection services which include a

malware elimination encryption. The company is also in cooperation with the law enforcement

and efforts to further enhance its security measures are ongoing. The company since then has

paid out their full payments totaling in $179 million. The customers were paid there $19.5

million by home depot and some of their information was used and settlements beyond Home

Depot’s part had to be made but everything to this current date is solved.

Home Depot had already hired a CISO, established a data security and privacy

governance committee to provide the board with regular reports, and adopted the National

Institute of Standards and Technology's. The breach of 2014 happened in both Canada and the

U.S. which ended up being the largest retail store identity theft data breach. Canada didn’t have

to deal with any of the breach because the companies cooperate office headquarters is located in

the U.S. In Canada if identity theft occurred, you would have to change your account numbers,
your PINs, and get a new credit and debit card. You would then have to repot the identity theft to

the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre (CAFC). But this is very unlikely to occur because it is not very

common for people to fall victim of identity theft.

To Conclude, this 2014 identity theft/data breach was the largest retail breach that has

ever happened to a retail store in the U.S. This put the company in a large deposit that made

them pay a heavy $179 million in total. It was also a terrible thing to happen to the customers of

home depot as 50 million credit cards were stolen, and social security numbers were obtained as

well. Even though the customers would end up being paid $19.5 million for damages, valuable

information was stolen. But at the end of the day Home Depot would learn, improve, and move

on from this very fatal incident.


Sources

ArcTitan. “Case Study: Home Depot Data Breach Cost $179 Million.”

www.Arctitan.Com, ArcTitan, 20 Aug. 2021, www.arctitan.com/blog/case-study-data-

breach- cost-home-depot-179-million/#:~:text=The%20Home%20Depot

%20cyberattack%20was,looking%20for%3A%20The%20POS%20system.

Justice.gov “Former Home Depot Employees Sentenced to Prison for Identity Theft in Credit

Card Fraud Scheme.” Justice.Gov, USAO-Georgia, Northern, 4 Nov. 2015,

www.justice.gov/usao-ndga/pr/former-home-depot-employees-sentenced-prison-identity-

theft-credit-card-fraud-scheme#:~:text=ATLANTA%20%E2%80%93%20Paulette

%20Shorter%20and%20Lakisha,of%20The%20Home%20Depot%2C%20Inc.

Lukic, David. “Home Depot Data Breach, How Did It Happen.” IDStrong, 18 Dec. 2020,

www.idstrong.com/sentinel/home-depot-could-data-breach/#:%7E:text=More%20than

%2050%20million%20people,security%20codes%20and%20expiration%20dates.

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