Dive Brief:
- Supervalu says customer data may have been stolen after hackers broke into the point-of-sale systems used by the company.
- The owner of Cub Foods, Shop 'N Save, and three other supermarket chains said as many as 1,000 of the 3,300 stores it owns may have been compromised, but said it was unsure how much data had been stolen.
- The crime comes roughly a year after rival Target announced the theft of millions of credit and debit-card numbers and other customer information.
Dive Insight:
Target has had a difficult time winning back customer trust after the data breach last year. No doubt Supervalu will face similar challenges.
But the biggest loser here may not be the retailers, or even the customers. It's the banks and payment companies. As crimes like this grow more common, it becomes clearer that it's simply not very safe to use a card. Good old-fashioned cash, or much demanded but little available chip-and-pin cards, are safer. And it seems a growing number of folks have taken to cutting back on card use in the past few months.
In the meantime, Supervalu can take consolation in the fact that the company is already well into a plan to move out of the retail business. That may prove a very wise move as cyber crime grows.