Why did Home Depot accidentally just post private customer info on their website? The answer may surprise you.

Consumers expect retailers to keep their private information private. So the fact that Home Depot had 13 spreadsheets containing thousands of customers’ private information on Home Depot’s publicly- searchable website understandably caused a major stir.

A spokesman for Home Depot attributed the incident to “inadvertent human error.” Hopefully no consumers were or will be affected. Home Depot and other retailers should be aware they can easily minimize the likelihood of data loss and other human errors with automated controls to perform a risk analysis, detect errors, and increase information security.

You can read the full article on the Home Depot data breach here.