Boston, MA 09/04/2014 (wallstreetpr) – A chain of home improvement retailer, The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) had sought the assistance of security software solutions provider Symantec Corporation (NASDAQ:SYMC) and FishNet Security Inc. to probe a potential payment data theft of the consumers. The move comes in the wake of FBI investigating several banks on the possible cyber attack by hackers.
Investigation
The home improvement retailer had sought the help from the two companies after the company said that it was closely working with law enforcement officials and banks to find out the happenings, Bloomberg reported. It was preceded by KerbsOnSecurity report about a big theft of debit and credit card information that was posted for sale online. It was suspected to be accessed from the stores of the The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD).
The company said that it was primarily focusing on the matter with the highest priority so that it could gather information and be in a position to answer consumers’ call. It indicated that once it came to know about a possible breach on September 2, its security and forensics teams were working throughout to find out the exact position.
The spokesperson of the Home Depot said that the company could very well understand the concern and the frustration due to this type of incidents and expressed its apology. However, the spokesperson had neither confirmed nor denied any loss of consumers’ payment data theft.
Earlier Incidents
The problem of cyber attack seemed to have been not restricted to the The Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE:HD) alone. In the last one year, other chain of retail store operators like SUPERVALU INC. (NYSE:SVU), Neiman Marcus Group Ltd., and Target Corporation (NYSE:TGT) have all faced similar issues.
The founder of KerbsOnSecurity, Brian Krebs, told Bloomberg that the suspected loss of date could have happened either in late April or in early May, which meant that almost all the stores of the company included. In such an eventuality, the incident might be bigger than the Target had undergone.
