In the last few years, millions of consumers have had their personal details stolen by criminal syndicates in sophisticated cyber-attacks on retail chains. Retailers are tempting targets for these gangs, since the valuable material – the credit card numbers and identity data – is available in large numbers.

Some attacks on US retailers have been in the news, but South African organisations have also been targeted, and willcontinue to come under fire. New trends in online retailing are only making matters worse, as the attackers move on to new victims. The big story was Target, the second largest US-based discount retailer, but the runaway leader in terms of data loss. Over the course of several months at the end of 2013, attackers captured data for an estimated 120 million Target customers, including the credit card data of some 40 million. South Africa has a total population of just over 50 million, for comparison. Neiman Marcus, another retail chain, was exploited over the same time period, losing 1.1 million customer records.