Dive Brief:

• Home Depot Thursday said it has discovered that the recent data breach uncovered in September included 53 million email addresses that were also stolen.

• When the breach was first noticed, the retailer said 56 million cards were compromised, including emails, payment information, and other sensitive data.

• Unlike those compromised files, these additional files containing email addresses did not also include those more private and sensitive details.

Dive Insight:

You know what makes it difficult for a retailer to recover from news of a massive data breach? More news of a data breach. This round of discovered files so far appears to be a trove of only emails, which are often freely shared publicly anyway. It seems that they didn't contain the more sensitive information that was found to be stolen in September.

Still, the theft at Home Depot, though discovered in September, was apparently going on for months, and is bigger than Target’s last year. While the home improvement retailer has cybersecurity experts and law enforcement investigating the problem and shoring up its systems in order to prevent another, it has a way to go.