The Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) hack was huge — 56 million cards to be exact.

The company disclosed:

• Criminals used unique, custom-built malware to evade detection. The malware had not been seen previously in other attacks, according to Home Depot’s security partners.
• The cyber-attack is estimated to have put payment card information at risk for approximately 56 million unique payment cards.
• The malware is believed to have been present between April and September 2014.

To protect customer data until the malware was eliminated, any terminals identified with malware were taken out of service, and the company quickly put in place other security enhancements. The hackers’ method of entry has been closed off, the malware has been eliminated from the company’s systems, and the company has rolled out enhanced encryption of payment data to all U.S. stores.

Home Depot’s management says:

[T]he company’s IT security team has been working around the clock with leading IT security firms, its banking partners and the Secret Service to rapidly gather facts, resolve the problem and provide information to customers.

Of course it is, but this kind of work must be very hard.

ALSO READ: The 10 Biggest Data Hacks of All Time

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