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From there, the plan should prioritize the highest-risk gaps first, typically access controls and encryption, before layering in monitoring, employee training, and vendor review. Organizations that treat prevention as a documented, repeatable plan consistently catch more gaps than those relying on ad hoc fixes applied only after something goes wrong. Few of these breaches trace back to a single dramatic failure; instead, they usually reflect several smaller, ordinary gaps compounding together, each individually survivable but collectively severe. Once inside, attackers were able to move from that vendor connection into Target\u2019s payment systems, largely because the network wasn\u2019t segmented enough to contain access at the point where a vendor\u2019s legitimate connection ended. Target\u2019s 2013 breach, which exposed roughly 40 million payment card records, didn\u2019t begin with an attack on Target\u2019s own systems; it began with stolen credentials from a third-party HVAC vendor that had network access for billing purposes. Because these tools are often adopted quickly to solve an operational need, security review can get skipped in the process; closing that gap is usually the biggest single improvement available.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n