Data Management

Investors don’t seem to care that Home Depot’s data breach is being characterized as the largest ever in the retail sector with shares of the company hitting a new high on Friday.

Home Depot shares touched a 52-week high of $93.75 on Friday a day after the company disclosed details about an extensive data breach which went undetected for months and compromised the information of 56 million customers.

New York -- Saks on Friday confirmed that five associates at its Fifth Avenue flagship were arrested in connection with credit card fraud. The investigation involved six individuals using stolen credit card information and impacted 22 Saks customers.

Atlanta – The program used to steal credit card data in the recent cyber attack on The Home Depot Inc. is reportedly not the same program used in the 2013 cyber attack on Target. According to Bloomberg, the malware used against Home Depot, FrameworkPOS, operates by impersonating a McAfee antivirus agent.

Arlington, Va. - Nicholas Ahrens will join the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) as VP of privacy and cyber security. Joining the association from the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Ahrens will lead RILA’s privacy and data security agenda and serve as the lead advocate to the government on cyber security, privacy, data security and related issues.

Nicholas Ahrens will join the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) as VP of privacy and cyber security. Joining the association from the Office of the General Counsel at the U.S. Department of Commerce, Ahrens will lead RILA’s privacy and data security agenda and serve as the lead advocate to the government on cyber security, privacy, data security and related issues.

New York – Almost all retailers consider Big Data to be important, according to a new survey from Accenture Analytics. When asked how important is Big Data to their organization, 94% of retail executives answered “important,” 58% responded “extremely important,” and 36% responded “important.”

Nashville, Tenn. – Cognitive computing provider Digital Reasoning has released Synthesys 3.9, the latest release of its machine learning platform for analyzing human language data at scale. Synthesys 3.9 provides capabilities to detect key risk and performance indicators in human communication and automatically connect and aggregate information based on those indicators.

Dallas - Epsilon has signed a multi-year agreement with Bulldog Solutions to integrate its marketing technology with Bulldog Gameplan software. Gameplan is a SaaS-based marketing application that delivers optimized marketing plans through full-funnel demand modeling, collaborative calendaring, marketing-mix optimization, and dynamic reporting of marketing’s impact on business results.  

As more retailers cope with data breaches, Virtual Piggy, provider of family and teen payment technology Oink, has added Jordan Harris to its team as risk officer.

Harris will be responsible for ensuring that all areas of the Oink offering are protected against payment fraud and ensure that the solution meets applicable laws and regulations. His focus will include working with management to identify and implement enhancements related to the management and monitoring of risk and fraud related functions.

Imerjn, formerly known as Xumanii International Holdings Corp, is an early stage company that develops and sells mobile software and hardware solutions. It has integrated its cloud with Facebook and Twitter, which will allow users to share files directly from the Imerjn cloud.