One month after its last chief information officer resigned, American retailer Target made two security-minded announcements on Tuesday with hopes of assuaging fears about how it handles credit card data.

The company's plan to upgrade its thousands of sales terminals has been accelerated. Now, shoppers can expect to see chip-and-PIN-enabled credit card kiosks in all of Target's 1,797 stores by September, a timeframe that's "six months ahead of schedule" according to a Target statement. That acceleration may have to do with Target's choice to transfer its entire line of internal credit and debit cards, known as REDcard, to MasterCard's chip-and-PIN system by "early 2015."

The shift to chip-and-PIN cards was coming anyway, because starting in late 2015, any vendor still accepting payments from magnetic-strip credit cards will be held liable for any fraud that results from such purchases. It's not clear that Target's massive data breach had anything to do with older magnetic-strip vulnerabilities, but to its credit, the company's announcement also highlighted a broad, if vague, series of internal initiatives, including reduced vendor access to payment records, internal password resets, and an upgraded logging system with better-defined alert systems.

Former advisor to the Secretary of Defense and Department of Homeland Security Bob DeRodes was also named as new Target CIO. DeRodes has previously held CIO positions at Home Depot, Citibank, and Delta Airlines, though Target did not cite specific efforts of DeRodes' at those companies in explaining his hire (and they're still on the hunt for a chief information security officer and a chief compliance officer). In a cheeky announcement page that also described his shopping habits, DeRodes made a statement that seemed less assuring and more of a reminder of how vulnerable credit card shoppers really are.

"Any time a consumer uses a credit or debit card there are risks, everywhere in the world," DeRodes said. "I think of the payment industry as an arms race, where retailers and banks have to stay out ahead of the bad guys."