The huge credit and debit card breach at Target that happened in December has finally claimed its leader. The company announced today that Gregg Steinhafel has resigned his positions as CEO, president and chairman of its board of directors.
Steinhafel had been with the company for 35 years. He became president of Target in 1999, and CEO in 2008. Officially, Target"s feelings towards Steinhafel"s work as its leader is positive, even when it came to its breach of personal information, saying, "He held himself personally accountable and pledged that Target would emerge a better company." He will stay on as an advisor until a permanent CEO is found.
Target first announced in December that 40 million credit card numbers had been taken from its database by unknown cyber criminals during the busy 2013 holiday shopping season. Later the retailer revealed that personal information from as many as 70 million people, including names, addresses, phone numbers and email addresses, had also been taken.
The investigation into the breach is still ongoing. Meanwhile, Target has beefed up its own credit card security measures and last week it announced that, beginning in 2015, its own credit and debit cards will be enabled with MasterCard’s chip-and-PIN technology to make their use more secure.
Source: Target | Target store image via Shutterstock