This month a serious data breach occured at the Hannaford Bros. supermarket chain which exposed 4+ million credit and debit card numbers to ID theft.  The company explained via a release on their website that the company had detected an intrusion of its computer network that resulted in the theft of customer credit and debit card numbers.

The incident, which occured around Feb. 27th, is very similar to the security breach at Framingham TJX Companies that affected 94 million credit card holders.

The Hannaford breach happened despite investments made to bolster security in the last couple years. As part of its PCI DSS compliance measures, for example, the company worked with its checkout counter computer software vendor to enhance encryption and eliminate some of the credit card data that had been stored. The fact that a breach occurred anyway illustrated the need for companies to create an advance response plan.

Are your systems protected from outside attackers?