Target Corp. announced on Tuesday that it has hired Brad Maiorino as senior vice president and chief information security officer (CISO).
Maiorino will join the retailer on June 16 and will be responsible for the company’s information security and technology risk strategy and report to CIO Bob DeRodes who was hired by the company in April.
Maiorino comes to Target from General Motors (GM) where he was the company’s CISO and information technology risk officer and responsible for leading the transformation of the company’s global information security and IT risk organization.
Prior to GM, Maiorino was the chief information security officer at General Electric.
“Having led this critical function at two of the country’s largest companies, Brad is widely recognized as one of the nation’s top leaders in the complex, evolving areas of information security and risk,” said DeRodes. “As an organization, we have made a commitment to our guests and our team that Target will be a retail leader in information security and protection. We believe Brad is the right person to lead that charge.”
“I am looking forward to joining the Target team and helping them continue the progress they have made to be a retail leader in information security and protection,” said Maiorino. “I am confident that the combination of a strong team and the leadership commitment will enable us to achieve that objective.”
In the months following the massive data breach that hit the company at the end of 2013, Target detailed significant steps it took to enhance its information security systems and processes while transforming its security and compliance structure and practices.
Examples of this included enhancing monitoring, segmentation, logging, and security of accounts and installation of application whitelisting on point-of-sale systems.
In February, Target announced a significant new initiative as part of the company’s accelerated $100 million plan to move its REDcard portfolio to chip-and-PIN-enabled technology and to install supporting software and next-generation payment devices in stores.
The retail giant said that beginning in early 2015, its entire REDcard portfolio, including all Target-branded credit and debit cards, would be enabled with MasterCard’s chip-and-PIN solution. Eventually, all of Target’s REDcard products will be chip-and-PIN secured, the company said. The new payment terminals will be in all 1,797 U.S. stores by this September, six months ahead of schedule.
Target also said that in March it joined the Financial Services Information Sharing & Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), an organization formed by the financial services industry to help facilitate the detection, prevention, and response to cyber attacks and fraud activity.
Related: Target CEO Exit Highlights Business Side of Security