'Soft-on-Crime' Policies: The Retail Crime Impact
Macy's-loving 'serial shoplifter' gets charges downgraded thanks to soft-on-crime Manhattan DA Bragg
An alleged serial shoplifter with an affinity for Macy's lucked out after his latest bust - getting his charges downgraded by the Manhattan District Attorney's Office despite having dozens of arrests on his rap sheet.

Police charged him with grand larceny, burglary and possession of stolen property, according to sources. But once the accused thief got to court, District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office reduced the charges to possession of stolen property and petty larceny, a misdemeanor - and Gonzalez walked out without bail.

"It sounds like the DA is being soft on shoplifting again," defense attorney and former Bronx prosecutor Michael Discioarro said of the case.

Gonzalez, 35, had also been freed to strike again after his at least five other arrests so far this year, including at Manhattan and Queens Macy's outlets, according to police sources. Macy's apparently found the alleged repeat offender to be such a menace that the department store agreed to a "trespass affidavit" against Gonzalez, the sources said.

Saland added that the affidavit "only means so much if the DA's office is not going to prosecute these crimes. "It's no consequence if someone is being released without penalty or punishment," he said. "It doesn't do much unless law enforcement takes action on the other side of it."

One police source griped that, "Everything property-related gets downgraded." "He just keeps going back," the source said of the accused serial shoplifter. "There's no bite to the bark. The DA's Office just doesn't care."

His case is just the latest in a spike in shoplifting in the Big Apple that has retailers concerned about staying afloat despite the rash of thefts. "This individual crime is part of a larger problem with the continuing loss of confidence in the future of our city," Wylde said. "Police are totally frustrated that these serial shoplifters walk free. Shoplifters know they can get away with it." nypost.com

Manhattan DA: The Next Recall Target?
Why recall election for San Fran's soft-on-crime DA should rattle NY's Bragg
Tuesday's recall election for San Francisco's progressive district attorney could signal an earthquake that leads to the ouster of embattled, soft-on-crime Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg, legal experts said.

"If [Chesa] Boudin is removed it should send shockwaves throughout every progressive prosecutor's office," Manhattan prosecutor-turned-defense lawyer Mark Bederow said Monday.

"Every progressive prosecutor, Bragg included, will take note that if a progressive prosecutor in San Francisco can be thrown overboard by an overwhelming liberal electorate, voters elsewhere - including Manhattan - may do the same thing."

Eugene O'Donnell, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, noted: "Obviously, Bragg will be watching" the results of Boudin's recall election.

"If what you see in San Francisco, perhaps the most famously progressive city in the country, is a rejection of some of these ideals in an overwhelming Democratic electorate, I think Democratic politicians...will see that it is actually a significant political risk to being the most progressive when it comes to crime and punishment." nypost.com

Strengthening Penalties for ORC Rings
Michigan ORC bill gains momentum as it moves through Legislature
Sen. Jim Runestad's legislation to penalize organized retail crime under the state's racketeering statute continued to gain support on Tuesday as it was approved by the House Judiciary Committee.

"Organized retail crime hurts both consumers and businesses," said Runestad, R-White Lake. "Shoplifting has blown up into a multi-billion industry across America."

"The criminal rings organizing this activity also take advantage of the very poor, drug-addicted, and human trafficked individuals to steal high-value items from retail stores. This bill seeks to hold accountable those at the top of the criminal ring who benefit from coercing youth and vulnerable individuals to commit organized retail crimes on their behalf."

Senate Bill 691, which was approved unanimously by the Senate last month, would add similar language to the state's racketeering penal code in order to provide more legal leverage against criminals at the top of these efforts. Michigan's Organized Retail Crime Act, which was passed in 2012, prescribed felony sentencing for organizing, supervising, financing or assisting another person in committing organized retail crimes.

"Retailers regularly work in partnership with law enforcement to stop organized retail crime rings but know our prosecutors need more tools to stop this activity from continuing to grow. Strengthening the penalties for those organizing coordinated efforts will prevent criminal rings from targeting Michigan retailers," said Amy Drumm, Michigan Retailers Association senior vice president, government affairs.

The legislation also is supported by Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel, Michigan Solicitor General Fadwa A. Hammoud, Michigan State Police, Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police, Target, and The Home Depot. misenategop.com

45% Decrease in Law Enforcement Deaths - 111 Year-to-Date
9 Deaths in May: 4 Auto-Related - 2 Gunfire - 2 Illness - 1 Training Accident
In May, 9 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty. The cause breakdown (May 2022 only) is: 3 automobile crash, 2 gunfire, 1 struck by vehicle, 1 9/11 related illness, 1 training accident, and 1 duty related illness. This means that the year-to-date total for line of duty deaths is at 111, a 45% decrease from the same time last year.

The Officer Down Memorial Page extends our deepest condolences to the families, friends, and agencies who lost a loved one to a line of duty death this past month. We encourage our supporters to read the memorials of each of the officers who died in the line of duty. odmp.org

US: 86.9M Cases - 1M Dead - 82.8M Recovered
Worldwide: 538.2M Cases - 6.3M Dead - 511.5M Recovered

Former Senior Loss Prevention Executive
Know of any fallen LP exec? Let's remember & recognize.

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 358   Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 780
*Red indicates change in total deaths

COVID Took Away Employer Leverage
What Bosses Lost in the Fight Against Empty Offices: Leverage

Employer plans have played out like a game of chicken. Now workers are rebelling outright, and executives are trying everything to make the office worth it.

Optimism about return-to-office plans, across industries and cities, is slowly abating. When asked in early 2021 about the share of their workers who would be back in the office five days a week in the future, executives said 50 percent; now that percentage is down to 20.

The vast majority of Americans, particularly those in the service sector and low-wage jobs, have been working in person throughout the pandemic. But those who were able to work remotely got attached to the flexibility. In a January survey, the Pew Research Center found that 60 percent of workers whose jobs can be done at home wanted to work remote most or all of the time. Brian Kropp, vice president in Gartner's human resources practice. "Even some of the major companies that came out and said we want our employees in the office five days a week are starting to backtrack."

There's Apple, which recently suspended its requirement that employees return to the office at least three days a week. Google postponed its return to office planned for January, and by now roughly 10 percent of its employees have received permission to go fully remote or relocate. Intuit had at one point considered some kind of rigid return-to-office plan for its 11,500 U.S. employees but instead allowed managers and teams to set their own expectations of which days to go in. nytimes.com

Workers Demand Flexibility in the Post-COVID Era
Many who lost jobs during pandemic would return for the right pay and position, CNBC survey finds
In a potentially good sign for the economy, the CNBC All-America Workforce Survey finds many Americans who retired or became unemployed during the Covid pandemic would consider coming back to work, but they are looking for the right pay and the right job.

It found that 94% of those who say they are unemployed and 68% of retirees would consider a job. The unemployed cite pay and flexible hours and work-life balance as the top criteria for the right job, followed by a job they feel they are qualified for and company benefits.

For those who retired during the pandemic, flexible hours are the most important criteria, followed by pay and work-life balance. Most retirees said they would prefer to come back part time. cnbc.com

Cybersecurity & Modern Retail
Keys for Checkout Modernization Success

Stores beware: "The more devices there are on a network, the more cybersecurity targets an organization has to defend"

Retail will never be the same again. As the industry emerges from the changes caused by the global COVID-19 pandemic, retailers need to understand that they face new challenges amid an irrevocably altered landscape. Customers demand a more personalized, streamlined experience as they return to stores while maintaining many of the online shopping habits they established during the pandemic.

Technology tools that modernize the checkout process, such as mobile point-of-sale (mPOS) solutions and self-service kiosks, can help stores address this challenge. But to achieve this objective, retailers need to build out an infrastructure that supports these technologies, integrate them with other systems and make sure that users know how to handle them effectively.

Integrating Modernized Checkout Tools with Other Retail Systems

As they consider checkout modernization initiatives, retailers should work to gain an understanding of how these new tools will be tied to other back-end systems. One key area to consider is security. "Generally speaking, the more devices there are on a network, the more cybersecurity targets an organization has to defend," Azim says. "Stores need to be aware of protecting these targets."

Retailers also can derive additional value by connecting advanced in-store checkout solutions with other retail channels, such as e-commerce platforms. Omnichannel capabilities can bring a customer into a retailer's orbit, and then modernized checkout systems cement the relationship by allowing them to buy online and pick up in-store or return online purchases in-store. "To enable this, modernized checkout tech needs to be connected to different customer channels," Azim says. biztechmagazine.com

Businesses Must Keep Their Cybersecurity 'Shields Up'
Mandia: Keep 'Shields Up' to Survive the Current Escalation of Cyberattacks

As Mandiant CEO Kevin Mandia's company prepares to become part of Google, the incident response company continues to investigate many of the most critical cyber incidents.

Back in the early 2000s when Mandiant was a small consulting firm in Northern Virginia, Kevin Mandia typically worked on just one incident response (IR) case at a time. Today, Mandia's team at the now IR giant Mandiant - which Google is in the process of acquiring - works on more than a half-dozen cases concurrently.

The volume of attacks is growing, especially so over the past year, according to Mandia. In recent IR cases Mandiant has been investigating, zero-day attacks and pilfered credentials have become the weapon of choice to infiltrate an organization, overtaking phishing.

"A lot of customers are saying, 'How long do we have to have our Shields Up?'" he said, in reference to the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)'s current slogan for warning organizations to operate at heightened alert amid increasing cyber threat activity. "I think you have to keep [them] up. That's a lesson we're learning this year," Mandia said in an interview with Dark Reading this week.

"The impact of a breach is so much graver now," he said. Not only are ransomware and extortion getting more brazen and chaos-causing with public data leaks and digital blackmail, but cybercriminals are basically catching up with nation-states when it comes to exploiting expensive zero-day vulnerabilities in software, he said.

"In the early days, zero days were the purview of governments. In 2017, you started to see criminal elements arming a zero day," he said. Today, it's close to a 60-40 split, with nation-states still leading in zero-day attacks but with criminals not far behind. "That came sooner than I thought," Mandia added. "It just tells you how much money you can make hacking." darkreading.com

It Doesn't Pay to Pay
Study Finds Eighty Percent of Ransomware Victims Attacked Again
A new study finds that 80% of companies that paid a ransom were hit a second time, with 40% paying again. Seventy percent of these paid a higher amount the second time round.

These figures come from an April 2022 Cybereason study that queried 1,456 cybersecurity professionals from organizations with 700 or more employees. The shocking nature of the statistics, published in Ransomware: The True Cost to Business (PDF) go much deeper.

It's not a problem that can be ignored with the vague belief, 'it won't happen to me'. Seventy-three percent of organizations have suffered at least one ransomware attack in the past 24 months - up 33% from last year.

Sixty percent of companies admitted ransomware gangs had been in their network from one to six months before they were discovered - a key indicator of a double extortion attack. But paying the double extortion fee doesn't really help; nearly 200,000 companies never received their data back after paying. And the criminals still have the data regardless. Thirty-five percent of companies suffered C-level 'resignations' because of a ransomware attack.

Other key findings of the research include the prevalence of the supply chain as a factor in the attack. Sixty-four percent of companies believe the ransomware gang got into their network via one of their suppliers or business partners.

Business disruption is almost inevitable. Thirty-one percent of companies were forced to temporarily or permanently suspend operations following an attack, and nearly 40% of companies laid off staff as a consequence. Only 42% said the payment resulted in restoration of all systems and data (down from 51% last year. Furthermore, 54% said that system issues persisted or that some data was corrupted after decryption.

But the most shocking indicator of the futility of paying comes from the repetitive nature of extortion attacks. Eighty percent of victims were hit a second time. Forty percent paid the second ransom. Ten percent paid a third ransom, and 1% paid a fourth. The additional attacks come rapidly and usually demand a higher figure. Sixty-eight percent of firms said the second attack came less than a month after the first, with an increased demand. securityweek.com

RSA Conference 2022 video walkthrough RSA Conference 2022 took place in San Francisco this week, from June 6th through June 9th. This video provides a closer look at this year's event. Watch it here.

Recovery and resilience: CISO insights into the 2022 cybersecurity landscape

Experts say ransomware could be bigger threat for campaigns in 2022