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IPLocks, a compliance and database security company, has estimated that the cost to TJX Companies Inc, which owns TJ Maxx, will be around $4.5 billion. This is based on a cost of $100 dollars per record, and costs are a total of fines, legal fees, notification, as well as permanent damage done to the brand.

While $100 dollars per record runs pretty much average, others have said this amount is low. According to Information Week, The Ponemon Institute, a data protection think thank, believes the breach could reach somewhere in the range of $182 per record, which is based on the costs of 31 different incidents. For TJX, that would bring their ever-escalating fiasco to $8.6 billion.

"The effectiveness of the people who stole the information is critical here," said Lane. "They did it for a long time. They sold [the stolen information] out to multiple sources. Those credit card numbers are showing up in foreign countries. This is not just a U.S. security breach anymore."

What I hope from reporting this kind of story is that people realize how important protecting their data is. If the data is valuable enough for the company to hold onto it, then it's probably valuable to someone else as well, someone who will do whatever they can to get their hands on it. And if data protection seems expensive, just imagine how cheap it looks to TJX right now.

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