Attention Target shoppers, we regret to inform you that up to 40 million of you may have had your credit card information stolen, and up to 70 million may have had some, or all of your personal information compromised. Oops. Have a nice day.

Five Months After The Target Data Breach – Lessons Learned

Despite the bit of snark above, Target’s post-breach behavior was solid, if not exemplary.

First things first, if you haven’t heard of hashtag shopping, you’re not alone. A month after its roll out, it had less than four thousand users, so it’s not like it’s an idea whose time has come. It’s an emerging thing that some companies are toying with right now.

E-Commerce and auction giant eBay confirmed yesterday that the website did indeed take a hit from hackers, and that the database that contains user passwords and usernames was compromised.

At the moment, eBay believes that no financial information was accessed.

It’s a tough world out there in business today. You work hard at your business, and you value your staff – their abilities, their dedication to their jobs, and their loyalty to the company. You want to reward your staff, but you’re at a loss as to how to go about it.

It may be somewhat more appropriate to call this article, “How Instagram Changed The Internet.” I say that because Instagram’s surging popularity was the primary reason for both the recent FaceBook redesign, and now Twitter’s. Many people will say that Twitter’s redesign is in many ways a carbon copy of FaceBook’s, and it’s true that they do bear some, even many similarities.

Training is one of those aspects of running a business that never seems to get a lot of attention, and what press it does get is usually negative. Employees do it only grudgingly, and most businesses take a scatter shot or minimalist approach to it. It often seems to wind up being one of those necessary evils that people slog through when they have to.

Sometimes, the worst happens. You’ve got a crew of great people and the bottom falls out. If you don’t let some of them go, everybody gets let go when you have to shut your doors. It’s a no-win situation, but business is driven by the market, by demand.

Game theory is one of the most powerful tools a business (any business) can bring to bear on a problem. It doesn’t matter what it is, game theory can help you solve it. Even better, the solutions offered by game theory in general, and gaming in particular can help your company run better, faster, smoother, and more efficiently than it ever has before.

You’ve probably got a good idea who should be looking at your data, the question is, who actually is looking at your data? One would hope that the two lists were close to, if not exactly identical, but what if they’re not, and how could you possibly know?

Depending on the line of work you’re in, there may be a whole lot more people with eyes on your data than you first thought.

Develop Clear Policies On Expenses

This is the place to start, not the avenue you take after the abuses begin. You can determine these policies yourself, but it makes sense to include a few key staff, especially if you have not been making your own travel arrangements.