Home Depot agrees to $17.5m settlement in 2014 data breach

Home Depot has reached a $17.5 million settlement with the attorney generals of most U.S. states over a 2014 data breach in which the payment card information of some 40 million customers was exposed

Home Depot Data Breach Settlement (Copyright 2020 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.)

Home Depot has reached a $17.5 million settlement with the attorney generals of 46 states and the District of Columbia over a 2014 data breach that exposed the payment card information of some 40 million customers.

The Massachusetts Attorney General’s office detailed the settlement in a statement Tuesday, saying Home Depot agreed under its terms to employ a full-time chief information security officer among other measures.

Cybercriminals hacked into Home Depot’s self-checkout point-of-sale systems using a third-party vendor’s username and password and installed malware that harvested the customer data from April through September 2014.