I help make technology easy! Join the hundreds of thousands of people who have a leg up on their friends by following my blog and listening to my podcasts every week. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. It will give you the edge, too! Thanks for visiting!

Image via Wikipedia

It’s hard to believe that any company would be so foolish as to use rank amateurs to build and monitor their security systems. It would appear that Hannaford Bros. must have hired the best of the worst.

According to a report in the Boston Globe last week, 4.2 million credit and debit cards were stolen — and it was entirely avoidable. These numbers were stolen by malware which Hannaford had not detected.

Inexcusable!

I’ve built secure data systems for Banks, Credit Card Clearing Houses, Telephone Companies, Hospitals and Manufacturers.  I know these systems, and in this day and age the type of breech Hannaford experienced was completely predictable and avoidable.

To have credit and debit card information stolen as shoppers swiped their cards at checkout as the data was transmitted to the clearing houses for approval is inexcusable.