Society of Payment Security Professionals - Payment Security Blog

Cost of cardholder data compromise

I hope after all the recent press about the newly released compromise numbers and the TJX 10k filing (PDF), we can agree that this compromise has had a “material” affect on their company.

We do not know what, if any, additional information we will learn in our investigation, but that information could materially add to or change the information provided in this Form 10−K.

Such losses could be material to our results of operation and financial condition.

Wired’s 27BStroke6 references a Protegrity calculation showing the cost of 45.7 million credit cards being compromised.  They put the estimated cost at$1.7 billion.

I don’t know the validity of the calculation, but the idea is that the cost will be BIG.  It factors in things such as “cost of brand impact” and “lost customers” which are almost impossible to determine.  I wish they had used actual statistics such as: charge backs, lawsuit settlements, and the like.  I do like their usage of “cost of fraudulent use of data”, which just might roll up these statistics.