Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

“We had this case all worked out. I saw my client on Tuesday and we had this thing zipped, locked, sealed and ready to go forward,” Palomino said. “They were not supposed to indict him on Wednesday. We’re trying to bring closure. Everyone is trying to wash their hands (by dumping all charges on Gonzalez). I’m not saying that he didn’t do anything.”

Of course, the real issue here is: How can a group of people like this had been able to successfully penetrate such a lengthy Who’s Who of major retailers? The indictments have alluded to—but not identified—either two or three other major chains that were breached.

The Boston indictment vaguely refers to one major retail chain, but doesn’t identify the chain. We’ve spoken with someone from that chain who asked that their name—for now—remain secret. The New Jersey indictment explicitly refers to two retail chains that it is keeping secret, for the moment. Federal authorities—both at the Justice Department and the New Jersey U.S. Attorney’s Office—wouldn’t say if the unidentified retail chain referred to in the Boston indictment is one of the two referenced in the Newark indictments. That’s why we’re saying there are either two or three unidentified retail chains involved.

Were the thieves’ tactics so sophisticated or were the retail chains’ security so lax? (Yeah, we don’t quite need a show of hands to answer that last question. As Yoda would have said, “Einsteins, these attackers were not.”)

The crucial next question is “These break-ins happened months—and, in some cases, years—ago. Are these—and other—retail chains still as vulnerable today? Security is always great at fighting the last war. In other words, it’s unlikely that the old assaults from this crew would be nearly as successful today with larger chains. But that’s the point. These crews won’t mount the same kinds of attacks again. They’ll sniff around, find another huge vulnerability and attack again in a different way. (In a terrorism context, the next 9/11 won’t likely involve hijacked commercial aircraft.)

But we won’t need to ponder this hypothetical for very long. As long as zero liability and an absence of meaningful data protection laws exist, retailers can’t justify investing in the security they truly need. So the next group of Gonzalezes will be around shortly. Truth be told, they’re probably already in your system right now. We simply won’t realize it for six more months.