Home Depot Security Breach NEWS ANCHOR: Now to what could be one of the biggest data breaches ever to hit a major retailer. This morning, Home Depot is investigating whether its customers credit and debit cards were exposed. It's not clear how many stores or shoppers could be involved. But experts say, it could be larger than the breach that affected 40 million shoppers at Target last year. In a statement, Home Depot says, protecting our customers information is something we take extremely seriously. CBS News contributor and analyst Melody Hobson is in Chicago. Melody, good morning. MELODY HOBSON : Good morning. NEWS ANCHOR: So why do these security breaches keep happening? HOBSON: It's like that old saying, why do you rob a bank? It's where the money is. The cyber thieves know, they're the new organized crime, that there's a lot of money to be made online because 60% of us are banking online. Most of us are shopping online. So when they get these numbers, they can sell them. And just to use the Target example, the estimates are that the thieves made in the neighborhood of $50 million from that one breach. NEWS ANCHOR 2: So what are these company's going to do? What are potential targets going to do? HOBSON: Well now what they're saying, Target was the wake up call. They knew that they lost almost $2 billion in market cap. Their profits plummeted. The CEO lost his job. So now the retailers are saying we have to get in front of this and play offense. [Text on screen: “Target November 27 to December 15 2013. 40 million credit/debit cards compromised. Personal info stolen from 70 million. PF Change’s October 19 2013 to June 11 2014 33 restaurants affected] HOBSON: On top of that, the credit card companies have said that if the new card reader technology hasn't been adopted by October of 2015, if there is fraud, the retailer is responsible. [Text on screen: “Neiman Marcus July 16 to October 2013 350,000 credit cards compromised. UPS January 20 to August 11 51 franchises affected] HOBSON: So now everyone's trying to get in front of this new card reader, which has dual verification which makes the transaction much, much safer for both the retailer and the customer. NEWS ANCHOR: So let's talk about that new technology we keep hearing about it, called chip and pin technology. When's it going to be available? What does it mean for consumers when you're shopping? HOBSON: So I'm told, I talked to one of the major retailers yesterday, in the next 18 to 48 months, you're going to see most retailers adopt this. [Text on screen: “Adopted by retailers in next 2 to 4 years. Estimated cost of overhaul equal to $8 billion] HOBSON: Now, interestingly, Wal-Mart adopted it eight years ago. And even Home Depot has a lot of these card readers in their stores right now. But you need the new credit card. And interestingly, I just got my new AMEX that has chip and pin technology. They sent me a letter saying that it is going to be safer. [Text on screen: “How does it work? Includes name and card company logo. Contains chip with account info. Requires PIN to confirm identity. Nearly impossible to counterfeit”] HOBSON: So this is now rolling out right now. And you'll probably see much, much more of it coming if you haven't already. NEWS ANCHOR 2: I assume that the credit card companies and others who are having to take these extra measures, will simply pass on the cost of that to the customers, to their customers. HOBSON: Again, I talked to this major retailer yesterday, I don't know how they can do that. Now the costs are huge. They're estimated to be about $8 billion to change all these systems around the country. But I don't know how they could pass it on. [Text on screen: “Costs of data theft for companies. Target costs: $148 million. Breach related-claims, consumer confidence hit. Source: The New York Times, Target]