Smart Staffing & Tech Can Tackle Theft Without Frustrating Shoppers
How retailers can fight theft without hurting customer experience

Locked cases drive potential customers to online alternatives. Helpful associates assist customers while inconveniencing crooks.

More and more retailers are locking products inside cabinets to prevent theft. While this approach can thwart would-be thieves, it can also frustrate customers who have to wait for assistance to access common products.

Theft prevention doesn't have to come at the cost of customer experience. A combination of smart staffing practices and carefully applied technology can form a better deterrent than putting products under lock and key.

Security cabinets don't always work, and can have a negative impact on margins. Thieves still have ways to nab locked up items, while honest shoppers will take their business elsewhere, experts told sister publication CX Dive.

Attentive associates thwart criminals

Retailers can improve customer experience and deter thieves at the same time by having more workers on the floor. Associates can't stop truly determined and organized thieves altogether, according to Elverston. However, a majority of would-be criminals can be stopped by a helpful worker simply walking up and asking if they need help finding something.

Cameras and AI work well together

Computer vision, computers trained by AI to identify and track items and people, can tap into existing networks to detect suspicious activity more effectively than a human could.

AI-powered theft solutions detect actions commonly associated with theft, such as a customer hiding items in their cart, and can notify staff if needed, Elverston said. This lets them deter crime without impacting honest customers' shopping experience.  retaildive.com


Will the CA Governor Step in to Save the Anti-Crime Effort?
California Gov. Gavin Newsom urged to halt progressives' 'scheming' to derail popular anti-crime initiative
California Republican Rep. Kevin Kiley and the rest of the state's Republican delegation are calling on Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Democrats to drop what they say is "cynical political scheming" to legislatively undermine a popular bipartisan anti-crime effort.

On Tuesday, the Secretary of State's Office announced voters will have their chance to repeal key portions of the controversial Prop. 47 law - which significantly lowered the penalties for certain categories of drug and theft crimes - in the November general election after the petition garnered more than 600,000 valid petition signatures to secure a spot on the ballot. The initiative only needed 546,651 to qualify, according to the state secretary's office.

But Newsom and Golden State Democrats oppose the initiative and are working to fast-track their own public safety bills pertaining to curbing criminal retail theft without reforming Prop. 47. Some Democrats plan to introduce inoperability clauses into the set of proposed public safety bills to prevent them from going into effect if voters approve the Prop 47 reforms. They contend that it's a way to ensure there aren't any inconsistencies in the law.

"This measure will repeal the most problematic provisions of Proposition 47 from 2014. It is a vitally needed policy correction to address the growing problems of retail theft, open-air drug markets, and homelessness in our state," Kiley wrote in a letter to Newsom on Tuesday.

The California Republican added that not only have hundreds of thousands of Californians signed the petition, but it has also received bipartisan support from lawmakers such as San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, San Francisco Mayor London Breed and San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria. yahoo.com

   RELATED: CA Democrats pit retail-theft bills against Prop. 47 rollback measure


Gun Homicides Down 16% Since 2021 - But Still 16% Higher Than Pre-COVID
Early 2024 Data Show Promising Signs of Another Historic Decline in Gun Violence

U.S. gun homicides are declining dramatically, down 13.1 percent since 2023 and 16.4 percent since 2021.

Earlier this year, the Center for American Progress released an analysis of 2023 gun violence data showing a historic overall single-year decline in gun homicides across the country. This decline was precipitated, however, by a record surge in gun violence at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, during which gun murders increased by 45 percent between 2019 and 2021.

Consequently, even with the historic decline in the U.S. murder and gun homicide rates in 2023, gun violence was still elevated last year nationally compared with pre-pandemic levels. Furthermore, while a majority of U.S. states and major cities experienced fewer gun homicides in 2023 than in 2022, the CAP analysis showed, on average, that gun homicides fell much faster in states with the strongest gun laws, while states with the weakest gun laws saw marginal improvements to public safety, if any.

As of April 30, 2024, there are more positive signs that gun violence is continuing to trend downward at a historic rate. According to a new CAP analysis of Gun Violence Archive (GVA) data, gun homicides are down by 13.1 percent nationally in 2024 compared with the same time in 2023.

Compared with 2021, which recorded the highest annual rate of gun violence since the early 1990s, YTD gun homicides in 2024 are down by 16.4 percent. Overall, however, gun homicide rates are still 16 percent higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Mass shootings are down 29.3 percent in 2024 YTD compared with 2023 YTD.

Gun violence is down in most large U.S. cities: 70 of the 100 most populous U.S. cities and 37 of the 50 most populous U.S. cities have experienced the same number of or fewer gun violence victimizations in 2024 YTD compared with 2023 YTD. americanprogress.org


In Case You Missed It: Five Below has new secret weapon against theft
The retailer, which has been battling high levels of inventory shrink for well over a year now, said in its most recent earnings call that it will have employees handle between 75%-100% of checkouts, depending on a store's level of shrink. 

Retail Shrink & ORC: Losing Inventory, Losing Customers

DC crime news trackers aim to inform - but are they fueling a political agenda?

Calabasas, CA: Community seeks answers to growing retail theft menace
 

D.C. Grills Microsoft Over Cybersecurity Failures
Microsoft president to Congress: 'We accept responsibility' for cybersecurity failures
Microsoft "accepts responsibility for each and every one" of the issues cited in a scathing US government-backed report on the tech giant's cybersecurity failings, Microsoft President Brad Smith will tell US lawmakers Thursday, according to his prepared testimony.

"We acknowledge that we can and must do better, and we apologize and express our deepest regrets to those who have been impacted," reads Smith's testimony to the House Homeland Security Committee. He is set to testify before the panel Thursday afternoon in a hearing the committee says will assess the impact of Microsoft's "cybersecurity shortfalls" on homeland security.

Microsoft has been at the center of two sweeping hacking campaigns in the last year allegedly carried out by Chinese and Russian spies.

A report issued in April by the US Cyber Safety Review Board found that Microsoft committed a "cascade" of "avoidable errors" that allowed Chinese hackers to breach the tech giant's network and later the email accounts of senior US officials last year, including the secretary of commerce. The board is comprised of government and private cybersecurity experts led by the Department of Homeland Security.

Smith says Microsoft has for months been overhauling its cybersecurity practices, in part by implementing recommendations from the US government-backed board. cnn.com


Job Seekers Targeted by Phishing Campaign
New Phishing Campaign Deploys WARMCOOKIE Backdoor Targeting Job Seekers
Cybersecurity researchers have disclosed details of an ongoing phishing campaign that leverages recruiting- and job-themed lures to deliver a Windows-based backdoor named WARMCOOKIE.

"WARMCOOKIE appears to be an initial backdoor tool used to scout out victim networks and deploy additional payloads," Elastic Security Labs researcher Daniel Stepanic said in a new analysis. "Each sample is compiled with a hard-coded [command-and-control] IP address and RC4 key."

The backdoor comes with capabilities to fingerprint infected machines, capture screenshots, and drop more malicious programs. The company is tracking the activity under the name REF6127.

The attack chains observed since late April involve the use of email messages purporting to be from recruitment firms like Hays, Michael Page, and PageGroup, urging recipients to click on an embedded link to view details about a job opportunity.

Users who end up clicking on the link are then prompted to download a document by solving a CAPTCHA challenge, following which a JavaScript file ("Update_23_04_2024_5689382.js") is dropped. thehackernews.com


Windows, Android & macOS Targeted
Pakistan-linked Malware Campaign Evolves to Target Windows, Android, and macOS
Threat actors with ties to Pakistan have been linked to a long-running malware campaign dubbed Operation Celestial Force since at least 2018.

The activity, still ongoing, entails the use of an Android malware called GravityRAT and a Windows-based malware loader codenamed HeavyLift, according to Cisco Talos, which are administered using another standalone tool referred to as GravityAdmin.

The cybersecurity attributed the intrusion to an adversary it tracks under the moniker Cosmic Leopard (aka SpaceCobra), which it said exhibits some level of tactical overlap with Transparent Tribe.

"Operation Celestial Force has been active since at least 2018 and continues to operate today - increasingly utilizing an expanding and evolving malware suite - indicating that the operation has likely seen a high degree of success targeting users in the Indian subcontinent," security researchers Asheer Malhotra and Vitor Ventura said in a technical report shared with The Hacker News. thehackernews.com


Sevco State of the Cybersecurity Attack Surface Report Finds Enterprises Struggling with Environmental Vulnerabilities
Sevco Security, the asset intelligence company that delivers enterprise-wide visibility and prioritization across all classes of vulnerabilities, today announced the findings of The State of the Cybersecurity Attack Surface report, highlighting the prevalence of environmental vulnerabilities across enterprise networks.

The report, which examines data from 1.2 million IT assets, identifies the ways in which enterprises are struggling to get visibility into their IT assets, found that 28% of all IT assets are missing at least one critical control - either endpoint protection or patch management - and that 6% of IT assets have reached the end-of-life stage, creating instances of known-but-unpatched vulnerabilities.

The State of the Cybersecurity Attack Surface report details the ways that environmental vulnerabilities - vulnerabilities in the configuration or state of an IT environment, be they missing controls, unknown assets (shadow IT), or system software that is out of date and end-of-life - threaten enterprise networks, leaving paths to data exposed and companies susceptible to malicious actors. finance.yahoo.com


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