Brooks Brothers Warns of Payment Card Security Incident

Brooks Brothers said Friday it recently became aware of a security incident, which could impact the payment card information of customers who purchased items at its stores between April 4, 2016 and March 1. The upscale men's apparel retailer said the identified malicious software could have impacted users’ names, payment card account numbers, card expiration dates or card verification codes, however, it noted that no sensitive personal information (e.g., Social Security numbers or personally identifying information) was affected in this incident.

Total Retail's Take: A security breach has to rank up there, if not at the top, of retailers‘ worst nightmares. In addition to the immediate costs associated with such a breach — e.g., response activities like incident forensics, communications, legal expenditures and regulatory mandates — which IBM Security reports average $4 million,  there's perhaps the more damaging long-term effect of consumers losing trust in your brand. Consumers must be able to trust that their valuable personal information is safe when handing it over to a retailer, either in-store or online. Brooks Brothers has taken the first step of immediately alerting customers of the potential security incident. Now comes the hard part — regaining those customers’ trust.