Information Literacy, Samantha Shiner

For my first article, I used zdnet.com to find an article that discusses security.
Summary:
The Target data breach happened just over a year ago. Experts have developed a timeline
that shows critical junctures in the attack and highlights some points that show where the breach
could have been prevented or stopped completely. Sources say that the breach seems to have
begun on or around Black Friday 2013. The attack started on November 27, 2013 and was
reported to the U.S. Justice Department by December 13th. Target informed about 110 million
card users that had made purchases at one of their locations that their personal and financial
information had been compromised. A sequence of events precipitated the data breach. This
sequence of events was: 1. Preliminary survey, 2. Compromise third-party vendor, 3. Leveraging
Targets vendor-portal access, 4. Gain control of Target servers, and 5. Next stop, Targets point
of sale systems. This sequence of events led up to Targets data breach. This breach could have
been stopped long before it started. As a result of the breach, Target tried to improve security. If
the changes that Target says they have made to their security actually changes, it will help to
address the weaknesses exploited during the attack.
After finding my first article I found two other articles on the same topic of the Target
data breach. They keywords that I will use to conduct my search are Target data breach, what
happened, and how this could be prevented. The two search engines I used to conduct my
search were google.com and bing.com. When I conducted my search on Google, I noticed that
there were many articles related to my topic. They were all very detailed and were not just
similar to blog entries or things of that nature. The article I chose was very detailed and fairly
recent. It was very similar to my article from zdnet.com. When I used Bing to conduct my
search, I noticed that there were many articles listed about the topic I was searching, although,
the keywords that I had used werent exactly matching up with the articles. None of the articles
on Bing were quite what I was looking for. They werent telling me what had exactly happened
in the Target data breach. They were all very short and lacking detail. I believe that the Google
search engine is better than Bing. Google seemed to offer a lot more detailed articles where Bing
was very brief. Google also matched my keywords a lot better than Bing. I would definitely use
Google to conduct my searches over Bing in the future after this research.
One of the articles I had searched and found on Google was titled Target Credit Card
Data Breach: What Happened and What To Do Now. This article was written on December 19,
2013. This article has not been updated since it was first written. This article relates to my topic
very well. It talks about what exactly happened during the Target data breach, just like my first
article. It is very detailed and gives a lot of good information that I didnt already acquire from
my first article. The author of this article is Robert Schoon from The Latino Post. Schoon is
qualified to write about this topic. He is a writer and editor on media and technology. I know that
Schoon is qualified because I Googled his name and found information about his career and also
found him on social media sites that provided information about him. The information in this
article is trustworthy. All the information is sited at the bottom of the article and all his
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Information Literacy, Samantha Shiner

statements are supported by evidence through direct and sited quotes. This article was written to
inform the public about what had happened during the Target data breach and what they can do
about it now. The material in this article is very objective not showing any bias. It is just giving
reliable facts and information on the data breach that could be very informal and helpful to the
public.
I found two scholarly journal articles on the Target data breach from the CCBC library
databases. The keywords that I used in my search were Target, data breach, and what
happened. I used the Points of View Reference Center Database and the Business Source
Premier Database to find related articles. I used the points of view database because I thought it
would give me new and opinionated information about what had happened with the Target data
breach. I used the business source because I thought I could find some information about Target
since it is a big company.
The internet and journal articles that I have found are different in many ways. It was a lot
easier to find a good article on the Google search engine compared to the CCBC database.
Google was a lot easier to access too. It took a lot of time trying to find an article on the CCBC
database. They give you so many articles to choose from and a lot of them didnt even match up
with what I was trying to search. The CCBC database is also very confusing to me which made
the search even harder. The articles from the internet were also more credible compared to the
article from CCBCs database. I would choose to use the internet for research rather than
CCBCs databases.

Information Literacy, Samantha Shiner

Works Cited
Anatomy of the Target data breach: Missed opportunities and lessons learned | ZDNet. (n.d.).
Retrieved March 2, 2015, from http://www.zdnet.com/article/anatomy-of-the-targetdata-breach-missed-opportunities-and-lessons-learned/
Binkovitz, L. (2014). Report: Target Missed Its Chance to Prevent Data Breach. Points of View
Reference Center, 2.
Kerner, S. M. (2014). How the Target Breach Happened. Business Source Premier, 3.
Target Breach: What Happened? (n.d.). Retrieved March 2, 2015, from
http://www.bankinfosecurity.com/target-breach-what-happened-a-6312/op-1
Target Credit Card Data Breach: What Happened and What To Do Now. (2013, December 19).
Retrieved March 2, 2015, from
http://www.latinopost.com/articles/2280/20131219/target-credit-card-data-breach-whathappened-and-what-to-do-now.htm