NEW YORK (AP) — Target Corp. Chief Information Officer
Beth Jacob is resigning effective Wednesday as the retailer overhauls
its information security and compliance division in the wake of a
massive pre-Christmas data breach.
Target Chairman, President and
CEO Gregg Steinhafel said in a statement released to The Associated
Press that the company will search for an interim chief information
officer who can help guide the company through the transformation.
Jacob had been in her current role since 2008 and oversaw teams in the U.S. and India.
Target
disclosed on Dec. 19 that the data breach compromised 40 million credit
and debit card accounts between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15. Then on Jan. 10 it
said hackers also stole personal information — including names, phone
numbers as well as email and mailing addresses — from as many as 70
million customers.
Target, based in Minneapolis, also plans to
look outside the company for a chief information security officer and a
chief compliance officer. Before the overhaul, information security
functions were split among a variety of executives. Target’s new chief
information security officer will centralize those responsibilities, the
company said.
The previous duties of chief compliance officer
were overseen by Target’s current vice president of assurance risk and
compliance, who had previous plans to retire at the end of March. Now,
Target is separating the responsibility for assurance risk and
compliance.
Target also says it’s working with an outside adviser,
Promontory Financial Group, to help it evaluate its technology,
structure, processes and talent as part of the overhaul.
"While we
are still in the process of an ongoing investigation, we recognize that
the information security environment is evolving rapidly," Steinhafel
said in a statement.
Target is still grappling with the fallout of
the theft. The company said last week that its profit for the fourth
quarter fell 46 percent on a revenue decline of 5.3 percent as the
breach scared off customers.
While Target said sales have been
recovering since it disclosed the breach in mid-December, the company
expects business to be muted for some time. It issued a profit outlook
for the current quarter and full year that was below Wall Street
estimates.
The company is offering free credit monitoring for a year for any customer shopping at a Target store who
wants it.
It’s
also equipping its locations with more security technology. Target is
accelerating its $100 million plan to roll out chip-based credit card
technology, which experts say is more secure than using traditional
magnetic stripe cards.
When the final tally is in, Target’s breach
may eclipse the biggest known data breach at a retailer, one disclosed
in 2007 at the parent company of TJ Maxx that affected 90 million
records.
In a posting last week on a company blog, Steinhafel
said, "In the weeks ahead, we hope to understand more about how this
attack happened. And will use what we learn to inform our guests, make
Target a safer place to shop and to drive change across the broader
retail industry."
In a letter to Steinhafel furnished by Target,
the outgoing Chief Information Officer Jacob said resigning was a
"difficult decision," but she said that "this was a time of significant
transformation for the retail industry and for Target." She did not
mention the data breach.
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