Minneapolis — Effective May 5, Bob DeRodes will lead Target’s information technology transformation as executive vice president and chief information officer.
Minneapolis — Today Target Corp. has hired a new technology leader to help guide the company’s information technology transformation. Target also provided details on additional security enhancements the company has made following its 2013 data breach, and shared plans to incorporate MasterCard chip-and-PIN technology across its REDcard portfolio.
Effective May 5, Bob DeRodes will lead Target’s information technology transformation as executive vice president and chief information officer. In this role, DeRodes will assume oversight of the Target technology team and operations, with responsibility for the ongoing data security enhancement efforts as well as the development of Target’s long term information technology and digital roadmap. The company is continuing its active search for a chief information security officer and a chief compliance officer.
“Establishing a clear path forward for Target following the data breach has been my top priority. I believe Target has a tremendous opportunity to take the lessons learned from this incident and enhance our overall approach to data security and information technology,” says Gregg Steinhafel, Target’s chairman, president and CEO.
DeRodes joins Target with more than 40 years of experience and is a recognized leader in information technology, data security and business operations. He has been a senior information technology advisor for the Center for CIO Leadership, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Secretary of Defense, and the U.S. Department of Justice.
Since the initial confirmation of the data breach, Target has taken significant actions to further strengthen security across the network, including:
• Enhancing monitoring and logging
• Includes implementation of additional rules, alerts, centralizing log feeds and enabling additional logging capabilities
• Installation of application whitelisting point-of-sale systems
• Includes deploying to all registers, point-of-sale servers and development of whitelisting rules
• Implementation of enhanced segmentation
• Includes development of point-of-sale management tools, review and streamlining of network firewall rules and development of a comprehensive firewall governance process
• Reviewing and limiting vendor access
• Includes decommissioning vendor access to the server impacted in the breach and disabling select vendor access points including FTP and telnet protocols
• Enhanced security of accounts
• Includes coordinated reset of 445,000 Target team member and contractor passwords, broadening the use of two-factor authentication, expansion of password vaults, disabled multiple vendor accounts, reduced privileges for certain accounts, and developing additional training related to password rotation
Target also announces a significant new initiative as part of the company’s accelerated transition to chip-and-PIN-enabled REDcards. Beginning in early 2015, the entire REDcard portfolio, including all Target-branded credit and debit cards, will be enabled with MasterCard’s chip-and-PIN solution. Existing co-branded cards will be reissued as MasterCard co-branded chip-and-PIN cards.
Minneapolis-based Target Corporation has 1,924 stores — 1,797 in the United States and 127 in Canada.
SOURCE: Target Corporation