Target is accelerating a $100-million plan to develop chip-enabled smart cards with better security, after the company suffered a major cyber breach late last year.
In an opinion article published in The Hill newspaper, Target’s chief financial officer John Mulligan wrote that since the data breach, Target has sped up its plan to have chips that keep customers’ personal data more secure in their REDcards by early 2015. That date is six months earlier than their original plan. Currently, credit and debit cards in the U.S. have a magnetic strip that contains buyers’ financial information, but the new smart cards Target is working on will have a chip that encrypts buyers’ personal data during a purchase. So even in the event that a credit card number is stolen, the information is meaningless without the chip. Mulligan also suggests that requiring PIN numbers would add another level of security.
“Nothing is more important to Target than our customers,” Mulligan writes. “We are who we are because of their trust and loyalty. That is why it is so important to move forward with a more secure technology.”
Just hours later, Mulligan apologized for the breach during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on data security.
- Meet TIME’s Newest Class of Next Generation Leaders
- After Visiting Both Ends of the Earth, I Realized How Much Trouble We’re In
- Google Is Making It Easier to Remove Personal Info From Search
- Oil Companies Posted Huge Profits. Here’s Where The Cash Will Go (Hint: Not Climate)
- Column: We Asked Hundreds of Americans About Abortion. Their Feelings Were Complicated
- A Short History of the Rise, Fall, and Rise Again of the Marcos Family
- Long-Lasting Birth Control Is Already Hard to Get. Advocates Worry It May Only Get Worse
- Who Should Be on the 2022 TIME100? Vote Now