Messages to the Loss Prevention Family from Industry Leaders
 

Jason Swanson
Loss Prevention Manager, MOD Pizza

This is the time to let your creative mind thrive. Focus on the present and focus on what the future can hold. In the present, what can you do to help your family and teams weather this storm, what can you do to help your communities, and finally what can you do to help your business maintain as much profitability as possible. Looking forward, what ideas do you have to emerge from this crisis successfully, how will your industry change, how will your role change, and what can you do to impact those changes in positive and productive ways. Resilience, creativity and support from my family, friends and peers are what has helped me the most during these unprecedented times. I truly can't wait to see many of you in person as we emerge from this crisis!
 

Let's Hear From You - How has working from home impacted you?

Question of the Month: What do you think will happen when workplaces reopen after coronavirus lockdowns?

Will things return to the way they were, or has the grand work-from-home experiment forever altered office culture?

Monday we'll share the community's thoughts. Thanks in advance for your time. Remember it takes a community.  Gus Downing

Email us at lpnews@d-ddaily.net
 

Coronavirus Update: April 9

US: Over 454K Cases - 16K Dead - 24K Recovered

Worldwide: Over 1.5M Cases - 92K Dead - 346K Recovered
 

Third Week of Big U.S. Jobless Claims Sees 6.61 Million Filings
Bringing the total to about 16.8M during shutdown
The three-week tally implies an unemployment rate approaching 15%, well above the 10% peak reached in the wake of the last recession. The rate was 4.4% in March data that mainly covered the early part of the month, up from a half-century low of 3.5% in February.

As wide swaths of the economy shut down, workers have been laid off across industries with unprecedented speed. Filings will likely stay elevated in the coming weeks, after more states issued stay-at-home orders and Americans get through to file claims on jammed websites and phone lines.

California reported the most initial claims last week, at an unadjusted 925,000. bloomberg.com

What the C's Read
The Brave March Forward
Don't Let a Crisis Go to Waste

For many of the legacy brands and retailers who were evolving their models pre-crisis to be competitive and survive these consumer and business model shifts, my advice is to bite whatever financial bullet you must to go from evolution to revolution - tomorrow is now!!

The most important lesson coming out of this crisis should be that we never allow this crisis to happen again. What we should also learn is how the crisis has impacted our lives, the negative and horrible, but also how it can positively instruct our future. In many ways, the disruption and actual destruction of old and waning institutions, systems, structures - and in our case the retail ecosystem - can force transformative thinking, imagination, innovation, which can guide us to a positive future.

A survey and sent it to our readers consisting of senior and C-level retail and brand executives:
"What do you think the overall impact will be on U.S. retail after the coronavirus crisis ends?"

The results are interesting in the sense that a large majority (65%) of our respondents believe that online shopping will moderately increase, and practically equal numbers feel consumers will buy more groceries online (42%) and will be more selective (38%) in demand for quality and sustainability. Surprisingly, only 20% believe consumers will demand more in-store service and experiences.

Read all of the results of the survey: therobinreport.com


Mnuchin says he thinks US businesses could reopen in May
Treasury Secretary said Thursday that he thought the United States could reopen the economy during the month of May.

"I think as soon as the president feels comfortable with the medical issues, we are making everything necessary that Americans companies and American workers can be open for business and that they have the liquidity to operate their business in the interim," Mnuchin continued. thehill.com

US coronavirus death toll prediction drops over 25% to 60,000
As of Wednesday, the University of Washington's model now predicts that 60,000 Americans will die in the pandemic by Aug. 4, down from a projection of nearly 82,000 just a day earlier.

An influential model cited by the White House has cut its projected coronavirus death toll by 26 percent - along with its forecast of the fatalities for New York's worst day.

Nationwide, the model moves the country's coronavirus death toll apex to Sunday - four days sooner than expected - when 2,212 people are projected to perish from the deadly bug. nypost.com

CONTROLTEK Delivers Essential Business and PPE Supplies
CONTROLTEK a leader in retail asset protection and tamper-evident packaging provides essential security, operational and personal protective equipment (PPE) supplies to retail, banking and logistical customers amidst COVID-19.

CONTROLTEK has been a supplier of business-critical supplies like tamper-evident tape, labels, seals, and packaging to transport everything from cash, important documents, medication and biohazard materials for over a decade. The current COVID-19 crisis has heightened the demand and inquiries from customers as businesses look for security solutions to protect their assets during this unprecedented time. controltekusa.com

Thousands of ADT Employees Now Working From Home
The coronavirus has caused a seismic shift inside ADT's monitoring centers and several other facilities where the company services its more than six million customers. 

In mid-March, the number of ADT contact center employees working from home was close to zero. Now, approximately 88 percent (about 4,300) of ADT employees are working safely at home. Normally, a move of this magnitude would take months; ADT did it in three weeks.

"This Herculean effort epitomizes teamwork and is beyond impressive," said ADT President and CEO Jim DeVries. "In an incredibly short time, people across all functional areas of ADT came together to make this happen. The result is better care for our employees and seamless service to our customers during this crisis."

At the contact centers, an assembly line process of boxes of office equipment being loaded into cars prepared employees to work at home. Once home and online, employees were helping customers and colleagues within an hour. 

To make this happen, ADT set up a war room and hotline, and staffed a task force comprised of dozens of employees who worked day and night. This task force:

● Encrypted, engineered, scripted and installed software in 5,100 laptops, allowing agents to function as though they were working at an ADT facility.
● Doubled the company's VPN gateway to handle the exponential growth of remote users from 1,000 to 6,500.
● Upgraded internet circuit capacity by ten-fold.
● Updated sales and customer care processes/applications to ensure regulatory compliance.

"It's a professional milestone for many of us in IT to be part of this historic transformation," said Ibrahim Kassem, ADT SVP of IT. "But ultimately the greatest reward is knowing that our employees are safe at home while continuing to serve our customers." sdmmag.com

Securitas to Expand its California Workforce by 1,000
Securitas Security Services USA is adding nearly 1,000 new jobs across the state in key areas such as Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Jose, San Diego, San Fernando Valley, Central Valley and the Inland Empire. Its current California workforce includes 15,000 security professionals.

"It is becoming increasingly common for our clients to request our assistance in supporting their own emergency management efforts, such as guarding hospitals, healthcare facilities, clinics and grocery stores," says Kimberly Carson, Pacific Region Vice President of Human Resources. "These organizations need security services assistance from our first responder security officers. For public and private safety reasons the nation needs the support of the security services industry. Our Securitas security officers are on the front lines helping to keep our clients and communities safe." securitymagazine.com

The firm offers an online application at www.securitasinc.com/join-us

Business resiliency during crisis

Expert panel discusses how security integrators can weather the COVID-19 storm

At this point in the global pandemic, unemployment is soaring; furloughs are plenty; some businesses are no longer in existence; and according to Bloomberg Economics' model, chance of recession in the U.S. now stands at 100 percent. The time is now for security integrators to quickly adapt to these and other disruptions while at the same time maintaining continuous business operations and keep people safe by prioritizing what is most critical to be done. Easier said than done. 

The following online panel, organized by Arcules, met last week to help the industry navigate this trying time, offering tried and true advice based on experience, history and extensive knowledge, witnessing the ebbs and flows of years within the industry:

● Andrew Lanning, co-founder, Integrated Security Technologies and SecurityNext speaker;
● Bill Bozeman, president & CEO, PSA Security Network, Security Systems News (SSN) inaugural Legend Award Winner and Security Next speaker;
● Greg Keeling, CEO, NYSSINC, and SSN "20 under 40" class of 2017;
● John Mack, EVP MD, Imperial Capital, and SecurityNext speaker;
● Nigel Waterton, chief revenue officer, Arcules and SecurityNext speaker; and
● Ryan Schonfeld, founder & CEO, RAS Security Group and SSN "40 under 40" class of 2019.

Impact of COVID-19 on integrators: Read the discussion
 

UK Impact

UK: Coronavirus: thousands of stores forced to close over health, financial worries
The perception that all convenience stores are seeing sales boom as a result of the coronavirus lockdown is a false one, with thousands of independents struggling or being forced to shut up shop completely, say industry chiefs.

Greg Deacon, chief operating officer at the NFRN trade body, said supplier data suggested more than 4,000 c-stores and newsagents had closed as of the end of last week.

He characterised the situation as "the good, the bad and the ugly".

The "good" comprised some two-thirds of the sector, Deacon estimated, who were seeing more shoppers, increased spend and a boom in home deliveries.

The "bad" were often in transient locations, such as forecourt stores, where trading was tough, while the "ugly" had simply closed. talkingretail.com

Business secretary hails retail sector amid coronavirus crisis

GroceryAid enhances emotional & practical support helpline for grocery workers

UK: Police: Those intimidating or targeting health or retail staff should be dealt with robustly

UK: Shopworkers Trade Union Usdaw Urges Home Office to Protect Shopworkers
 

Mastercard's Ethoca On Helping Merchants Grapple With
The Upcoming Chargeback Deluge
A deluge of chargebacks is headed toward the payments industry, spurred by the coronavirus, as all areas of the global economy have been upended.

In an interview with Karen Webster, Johan Gerber, executive vice president of cyber and security products at Mastercard, said that many companies are being inundated with disputes and cancellations, and with demands to refund consumers' money - a trend that will branch out from travel and leisure verticals and into other segments.

The payments ecosystem, of course, is not and will not be immune to the seismic impact and aftershocks of the coronavirus. The effects are most immediately felt by the travel and hospitality verticals, along with a number of eCommerce segments. Purchases, events and trips are being canceled.

"We are living in history-making times," said Gerber - and the groundswell of chargebacks is just beginning, the calm before the storm. pymnts.com

Retail sales could remain down by double digits through 2021, Fitch says
Against a backdrop of mass store closures and stay-at-home orders for much of the U.S., Fitch Ratings estimates discretionary retail spending to decline by up to 50% for the first half of 2020, according to an emailed report.

With a consumer downturn increasingly likely, Fitch estimates sales to remain in decline during the second-half of 2020, and for sales next year to be down as much as 10% from 2019 levels.

While Fitch analysts expect many retailers can weather the current disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, they listed some companies that are more vulnerable given their respective financial and competitive positions. Among them are J.C. Penney, GNC, J. Crew, Land's End, Tailored Brands, Ascena and Party City.

Retailers across the board have been freeing up cash by tapping their credit lines, furloughing staff, cutting costs, pulling back on planned investments and, in many cases, skipping rent and stretching vendor payments. 

Some retailers could even be made stronger when all this is over, as weaker competitors drop off, the Fitch analysts said. retaildive.com

Retail workers are demanding new protections and benefits from their employers
The coronavirus outbreak is likely to permanently change the relationship between workers at retailers that have been deemed essential, like grocery, hardware, and big-box stores, and their employers.

Each day, the list of announcements from retailers about new steps they are taking to keep employees safe in stores, as well as to thank them for their work, is growing longer. While many of the benefits issued are being billed as temporary, what's become clear in recent weeks is that as their jobs are being classified as essential, retail workers see their jobs as being more worthy than ever before of better benefits. They are also having to work longer hours, and complete more tasks in a certain amount of time, as shoppers flock to their stores while little else remains open.

The retail industry has been notorious for resisting offering certain benefits that are common in other fields, like paid sick leave. And they've been able to do that because they rely on a workforce that is highly seasonal, and that is typically able to hire new workers fairly quickly. But that may change once the coronavirus outbreak is over.

"Labor models have got to change considerably," said Dave Marcotte, senior vice president at Kantar Consulting. Because the list of benefits that retail workers want each day is changing. Hazard pay, PPI, Paid sick leave. modernretail.com

Pandemic or no, card companies will not extend
Outdoor EMV deadline for c- and g-stores
With the COVID-19 pandemic (rightfully) dominating the global news cycle, you might have missed a specific piece of news that greatly impacts fuel and convenience retailers. Despite all the economic disruption caused by the pandemic, leading credit card companies do not plan to extend what's commonly known as the "Outdoor EMV" deadline.

This deadline is based on the liability shift for retailers who fail to implement Europay, MasterCard, Visa (EMV) chip readers into their fuel pumps. The current deadline - October 1, 2020 - remains in effect. retailwire.com

Tennessee OSHA office received 164 COVID-19 complaints in a month
The documents reveal the fears of employees noting their coworkers coming to work sick and employers not enforcing physical distancing standards.

Dozens more report insufficient personal protective equipment, employers refusing requests to work from home and some report that employers aren't taking the pandemic seriously enough.

The first report in this time period was recorded on March 5. Twenty reports were made on April 2 alone, and the agency received a total of 80 complaints last week.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee gave local law enforcement agencies the authority to enforce his executive orders 17 and 21, which closed certain non-essential businesses and limited operations of other businesses as the COVID-19 pandemic progresses. wjhl.com

Overcoming Remote Worker Communication Challenges with Mass Notification
As states have shut down non-essential businesses from gathering at their normal facilities, organization leaders have needed to find ways to overcome the challenges of communicating with their people while they are remote. Most regular communication methods are no longer accessible once people are off-site.

Without a tool in place to get critical messages in front of your people, you may be exposing them to unnecessary risk, contributing to confusion around new operation expectations, and further hurting your business continuity by impeding productivity.

An organization's ability to mitigate the effects of the coronavirus is going to rely on strong communication across its workforce. That's why many are turning to mass notification solutions to deliver attention-grabbing alerts that keep people informed and engaged.

With people working remote, their mobile phone will become an important tool for receiving updates. Mass notification systems can deliver alerts as SMS text messages, push notifications to a mobile app, emails and phone messages. While many organizations may default to using mass emails as their main method of communicating updates to workers, emails are easy to ignore, which is less than ideal when sharing information that impacts schedules.

Utilizing a multi-channel approach with mass notification helps ensure everyone sees a message and takes the appropriate actions given the information they have received. Communicating with text and audio also makes the information accessible to anyone who needs to receive it. ehstoday.com

ISC West 2020 Further Postponed Until October 5-8

Rite Aid kicks off 5,000 hiring blitz, expands store safety efforts

Tractor Supply adding 5,000 jobs, in its "most ambitious hiring drive ever"

Bass Pro Shops Cuts Pay for some & 3/4's stores remain open

China's Exports Take a 50% Hit as the Country Faces a New Wave of Coronavirus Cases

Coronavirus threatens to shrink the 40,000 struggling US movie theater chains

Dick's Sporting Goods furloughs 40,000 employees amid coronavirus pandemic

Lowe's Cos. is giving its employees time to "recharge" this Sunday




Quarterly Results
Ahold Delhaize U.S. March comp sales up 34%
Costco March comp sales up 12.3%


Genetec Offers Its Digital Evidence Management System at No Cost
Genetec Inc., a technology provider of unified security, public safety, operations and business intelligence solutions, is making its digital evidence management system, Genetec Clearance, available free of charge to any organization looking to efficiently share digital evidence from wherever they are. Genetec Clearance allows organizations to manage and distribute media and files from surveillance systems, body cameras, cellphone footage from bystanders and witnesses and other sources while avoiding the need to create or distribute physical copies. sdmmag.com

Security Conferences in 2020: What's Canceled, Postponed,
Going Virtual or Proceeding as Planned?
Earlier this year, Security Magazine provided a list of the top 20 cybersecurity conferences to attend in 2020. Now, a few months later, most of those conferences have been canceled or postponed or have gone virtual due to an unforeseen threat, affecting every industry in the globe: the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic.
Below, we have compiled a list of conferences that have been postponed, canceled, or that are taking place as virtual shows or proceeding as planned in 2020.

1. ISC West 2020 - postponed for 2nd time to October 5-8
2. InfoSec World 2020 - postponed to June 22-24
3. THOTCON Chicago - postponed to September 11-12, 2020
4. Securing Federal Identity 2020 - September 16-17, 2020
5. WORP Summit - postponed to September 18-20, 2020
6. Northeast Security Systems Contractors Expo - postponed to September 22-23, 2020
7. MSPWorld - September 30 - October 2, 2020
8. Illinois School Safety Conference - Fall 2020
9. InfiltrateCon - postponed to October (specific dates TBA)
10. Walmart's Sp4rkCon - postponed to October 3, 2020

See full list here: securitymagazine.com

WSJ: Cybersecurity Jobs Avoid Brunt of Cuts for Now

Cybersecurity is an essential function? How about in your retailer?

Security & control functions have largely been preserved amid widespread layoffs stemming from the coronavirus pandemic

Cybersecurity roles have been largely safe from widespread layoffs caused by the coronavirus pandemic although that could change if economic conditions worsen, experts say.

Despite a dismal jobs report released Friday by the Department of Labor, cybersecurity recruiters say they haven't seen a significant reduction in recruitment for key oversight roles, such as those in risk, compliance and security. For companies in heavily regulated industries-financial services, in particular-recruiters say these roles are critical both for day-to-day operations and firms' reputation.

Technology roles haven't been immune to the effects. U.S. employers cut 19,000 information-technology jobs in March, IT trade group Computing Technology Industry Association said in a report Friday.

Mr. Anderson cautioned that it was still too early to draw any conclusions about long-term trends.

Trade association International Information System Security Certification Consortium, has begun conducting research into how the industry is coping with the fallout from the pandemic and company attitudes toward cybersecurity. Of 161 working security professionals polled by the group as of Wednesday in an ongoing survey, 84% said their organizations view cybersecurity as an essential function. wsj.com

Microsoft shares new threat intelligence, security guidance during global crisis

By Rob Lefferts, Corporate Vice President, Microsoft 365 Security

Ready or not, much of the world was thrust into working from home, which means more people and devices are now accessing sensitive corporate data across home networks. Defenders are working round the clock to secure endpoints and ensure the fidelity of not only those endpoints, but also identities, email, and applications, as people are using whatever device they need to get work done. This isn't something anyone, including our security professionals, were given time to prepare for, yet many customers have been thrust into a new environment and challenged to respond quickly. Microsoft is here to help lighten the load on defenders, offer guidance on what to prioritize to keep your workforce secure, and share resources about the built-in protections of our products.

Attackers are capitalizing on fear. We're watching them. We're pushing back. Read full blog.

Keeping Vigilant for BEC Amid COVID-19 Chaos
FBI and security experts warn that attackers are particularly targeting cloud-based email systems at the moment.

This week the US Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) urged businesses and remote workers to be extra wary of business email compromise (BEC) scams through cloud-based email, warning that attackers have redoubled their efforts to carry out BEC attacks in the wake of the COVID-19.

In a public service announcement released by the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) on Monday, the feds warned that cybercriminals are specifically going after organizations that use cloud-based email systems with BEC attempts, cashing in on the fact that many victims will not have taken the care to turn on the security features on these platforms that need to be manually configured and enabled.

FBI's IC3 calculates that between January 2014 and October 2019 alone it has recorded $2.1 billion in actual losses from BEC scams targeting just two popular cloud-based email services.

Ultimately, it is going to be up to organizations to pass this knowledge on to workers who are already shooting from the hip in very unusual working circumstances. darkreading.com

Beware malware-laden emails offering COVID-19 information, US Secret Service warns


Zoom Rushes to Improve Privacy for Consumers Flooding Its Service

They Never Felt the Need to Examine Security

The features that allowed companies to hop on videoconferences also made it easy for trolls to hijack meetings and harass students.

Now the company is scrambling to deal with privacy and security issues that keep popping up. On Wednesday morning, Zoom announced that it had formed a council of chief information security officers from other companies to share ideas on best practices. The company also announced that it had hired Alex Stamos, the former chief security officer of Facebook, as an outside adviser.

"We were focusing on business enterprise customers," Mr. Yuan said. "However, we should have thought about 'What if some end user started using Zoom'" for nonbusiness events, "maybe for family gatherings, for online weddings." He added: "The risks, the misuse, we never thought about that."

Mr. Yuan said Zoom never felt the need until now to rigorously examine the platform's privacy and security implications for consumers. "If not for this crisis," he said, "I think we would have never thought about this."

Zoom's trajectory from mass media darling to privacy pariah may seem like a familiar narrative in a tech industry with a build-it-first, beg-forgiveness-later culture. But the coronavirus has accelerated the Silicon Valley story arc at an incredible pace.

Now attorneys general in several states are scrutinizing Zoom's privacy and security practices even as the company has publicly committed to improving them. nytimes.com

Coronavirus Sets Up Accelerated Push to Cloud for Cybersecurity Industry

On-site services will suffer, as will vendors that cater to small and midsize businesses, experts say

As the coronavirus pandemic shutters offices and batters the economy, experts say the largest-ever remote work experiment could supercharge the cybersecurity industry's shift to cloud services.

The pivot to working from home highlights the benefits of cloud-based services that can quickly scale up defenses around decentralized employees, they say. That could prove to be an opportunity for some companies when the shocks caused by the pandemic's spread recede.

"When a hurricane hits, the shoreline never looks the same afterward," said Alex Henderson, a cybersecurity analyst at investment bank Needham Group Inc. "What's going to be different, after this, is how cloudy the world is going to become." wsj.com