Home Depot (NYSE:HD) may be facing the biggest security breach in its history?

Home Depot (NYSE:HD) reported to The Associated Press on Tuesday that the company had joined forces with law enforcement agencies and banks to figure out the real problem behind the unusual activity; this activity could mean a hacking as well.

The spokeswoman for Home Depot (NYSE:HD), Paula Drake said that consumer protection is vital in their company and actions will be taken to gather facts in order to provide maximum protection to the customers. She continued to say that consumers will be notified if anything substantial surfaces.

In a recent event, security walls of a quite many retailers were broken by hackers; the list included some big names such as Target (NYSE:TGT), Supervalu (NYSE:SVU), P.F. Chang’s (NASDAQ:PFCB) and Goodwill. This security breach has the customers of these worried; their confidence in the security systems of these companies has dipped. Retailers along with card companies and banks are being asked to improve their security by adopting microchips into debit and credit cards in the U.S.

It is normally believed that chip cards are much better because they use a code that can be used only once; whereas magnetic strips use the owner’s credit card number.
Home Depot (NYSE:HD) breach was first reported by Krebs on Security’s Brian Krebs. According to Krebs many complaints came in from different banks that Home Depot (NYSE:HD) could very well be the source of a huge batch of debit and credit cards that were stolen; these cards were sold on the black market on Tuesday.

Krebs said that the number of stores that suffered the security breach is still not known; however preliminary analysis states that the security breach may have affected all of Home Depot’s (NYSE:HD) 2,200 U.S. stores. The banks that were contact reported that the breach began somewhere at the end of April or start of May.
Krebs believes that if the figures came out to be true then Home Depot (NYSE:HD) has suffered a lot. This security breach may even be bigger than the one Target (NYSE:TGT) faced which comprised 40 million debit and credit cards that were stolen within a period of three weeks.

He further said that the party that might be responsible for the act could be the same Ukrainian and Russian groups that were suspects in the Target (NYSE:TGT) breach.

The Minneapolis based retailer, Target (NYSE:TGT), is still trying to get over its massive breach that happened last year. The breach damaged the retailer’s profits, sales and repute. Target (NYSE:TGT) is busy revamping its security department along with systems and hopes to quickly achieve its target of $100 million roll out plan for chip-based credit cards for all of its 1,800 stores.

It is expected that innovative payment terminals will appear within this month which will be six months before their scheduled date. The retailer stated in April that it partnered with MasterCard in order to issue Target (NYSE:TGT) payment-cards which were equipped with brand new chip technology. 4,600 of its stores already have chip based terminals for check out; the remaining stores within the US will have their terminals up and running by the start of next year.

In Tuesday’s market shares of Home Depot (NYSE:HD) dropped by 2 percent or $1.88 and closed at a value of $91.15.