Cyber criminals accessed as many as 40 million credit and debit card accounts at U.S. Target stores between Nov. 27 and Dec. 15. This security breach is the latest in a hacking-spree that now affects brick-and-mortar stores in addition to website hacks.
Barbara Endicott-Popovsky, research associate professor and director for the Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity, was interviewed by Victor Luckerson for the Money and Business sections of Time.com.
“People who run companies are not aware that they’ve actually become software companies,” Endicott-Popovsky says. “We’re headed toward the Internet of things, where we have embedded software in every product. What we’ve done is open up a whole host of vulnerabilities.”