Zebra Technologies Announces Second-Quarter 2022 Results

Zebra Technologies Corporation, an innovator at the edge of the enterprise with solutions and partners that enable businesses to gain a performance edge, delivered solid second quarter results, executing well in a challenging macro environment. Sales growth was near the high end of our expectations, and we were able to deliver adjusted earnings per share growth over the prior year, despite continued elevated supply chain costs and foreign currency exchange headwinds," said Anders Gustafsson, Chief Executive Officer of Zebra Technologies.

Net sales were $1,468 million in the second quarter of 2022 compared to $1,377 million in the second quarter of 2021. Net sales in the Enterprise Visibility & Mobility ("EVM") segment were $1,022 million in the second quarter of 2022 compared with $966 million in the second quarter of 2021. Asset Intelligence & Tracking ("AIT") segment net sales were $446 million in the second quarter of 2022 compared to $414 million in the prior year period. Consolidated organic net sales for the second quarter increased 6.9%. Second-quarter year-over-year organic net sales increased by 5.6% in the EVM segment and increased by 9.7% in the AIT segment.

Zebra (NASDAQ: ZBRA) empowers organizations to thrive in the on-demand economy by making every front-line worker and asset at the edge visible, connected and fully optimized. With an ecosystem of more than 10,000 partners across more than 100 countries, Zebra serves customers of all sizes - including 94% of the Fortune 100 - with an award-winning portfolio of hardware, software, services and solutions that digitize and automate workflows.

Zebra is #25 on Newsweek's inaugural list of America's 100 Most Loved Workplaces and #79 on Forbes' list of America's 500 Best Midsize Employers. Learn more at www.zebra.com or sign up for news alerts. Follow Zebra's Your Edge blog, LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook, and check out our Story Hub: Zebra Perspectives. businesswire.com

ASIS Announces 2022 Security Industry Book of the Year Award Winner ALEXANDRIA, Va.-ASIS International, the world's largest association for security management professionals, today announced that "Principles of Emergency Management and Emergency Operations Centers (EOC)," 2nd edition (published by Taylor & Francis), by Dr. Michael Fagel was selected as its 2022 ASIS Security Industry Book of the Year.  securitysystemsnews.com

America's Crime Crisis Made Worse By Rising Prices
Shoplifting & Violent Crime on the Rise as Cost of Living Spirals Out of Control
Violent crime and shoplifting have been on the rise in the U.S. since the onset of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) lockdown and mandate regime, with officials accusing pandemic-related stress and slackened crime laws as a source of the change.

Several cities, including Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York, as well as rural areas, have witnessed an uptick in shootings and homicides over the past few years.  Consumer electronics retailer Best Buy, for instance, blamed strained profits on an increased number of shoplifts and violence in their stores across the nation during its November of 2021 financial reports.

Crime in numbers

According to a national online survey by food service research firm Lisa W. Miller & Associates LLC last month, 44 percent of interviewees felt insecure going out in public because of rising crime, according to The Wall Street Journal. Compared to the last probe from March, this number was up 5 percent from 39 percent.

According to data provided by the FBI, aggravated assaults rose by 60 percent in eateries nationwide from 2018 to 2020 and by 73 percent in grocery stores, the Journal reported.

Approximately 72 percent of food retailers questioned by grocery trade group FMI said they were planning to crank up their anti-violence policies. In contrast, the newspaper said 88 percent of the respondents said such measures were already in place, the newspaper said.

Loose regulations, or pandemic stress?

Some local officials and law enforcement lay the blame for the increase in crime rates on the political trend of loosening up criminal regulations and defunding the police, while others point to pandemic-related stress and consider rising inflation and tighter budgets as the main culprits.

The problems aren't limited only to America. In another article, we reported on how a UK industry magazine, The Grocer, observed a new exponential trend manifesting in the grocery industry, the most striking characteristic of which was the hike in first-time shoplifters.

The magazine said most snatching involved cheap personal items and food, signaling a tendency toward stealing for survival due to exponentially rising living costs. visiontimes.com

Thefts & Assaults Surge in NYC
NYC Crime: Murders Down, but Felony Assaults, Grand Thefts Highest in Decades
New York has switched last year's decade-high murder total for a decades-high increase in major theft and serious assaults. Car thefts, robberies, and burglaries are also on the rise.

The New York Police Department recorded more than 29,000 major thefts (more than $1,000 in value stolen) by the end of July-the most since 1998 and up by nearly 50 percent from the same period last year. Felony assaults, defined as causing potentially life-threatening injury, increased by nearly 20 percent, reaching more than 15,000, the most since 2000.

Murders, so far, dropped by about 4 percent to 253 from last year's 264, which was the most since 2011.

New York's situation mirrors the crime sprees of other large cities to some degree, particularly unscrupulous shoplifting.

Mayor Eric Adams and New York Police Department Commissioner Keechant Sewell recently called for changes to the state's 2019 bail reforms that blocked judges from requiring cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies and some violent felonies, including most second-degree burglaries and some second-degree robberies (pdf).

Recidivism rose markedly in the wake of the reform, according to Adams, a Democrat who ran for mayor partly on improving law enforcement. A quarter of burglary suspects arrested in 2022 committed another felony within 60 days, he said, up from less than 8 percent in 2017. For grand theft suspects, the 60-day recidivism rate rose to nearly 17 percent from 6.5 percent in 2017.

More than 140 people were arrested three or more times for burglary in the first half of 2022, up from less than 90 such individuals in the first half of 2017. Shoplifting recidivists (three or more arrests) went up to nearly 900 from fewer than 500 five years ago. theepochtimes.com

Hey NY Gov."Get Rid Of the Prosecutor That Won't Uphold the Law."
Kevin McCarthy and Gov. Hochul trade blows as GOP House leader slams NYC crime
Republican House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy slammed New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Thursday over her failure to dump "prosecutors that won't uphold the law" - as he railed against the Big Apple's soft-on-crime policies.

The GOP leader, who was in Manhattan to host a roundtable with local law enforcement, lashed out at Hochul after her campaign put out a statement ahead of his visit calling him an "insurrection apologist."

He accused Hochul of "playing politics" instead of trying to rid the streets of crime.

"Really?" McCarthy laughed as he was asked about Hochul's criticism of him. "I would simply say to the governor, get rid of the prosecutors that won't uphold the law. You have the power to do it, do it today."

Following the roundtable, McCarthy suggested that New York's controversial bail reform laws were to blame for the ongoing surge in violent crimes, calling it a "revolving door."

"Safety and security, it's a very big issue here but it's a big issue in every single city across America because of this progressive movement of defunding the police, electing these prosecutors who will not uphold the law."

Hochul has so far rejected calls to revisit bail reform legislation, insisting on Wednesday that judges should be to blame for the current crime spike. nypost.com

NY Gov. Hochul Says They Won't Revisit Bail Law
'We're in trouble, Gov. Hochul': Merchants plea for action on bail law
Siding with Mayor Eric Adams, frustrated merchants urged Gov. Hochul and the Albany legislature to roll back the controversial no-cash bail law to put more repeat offenders and other dangerous criminals behind bars.

"We're in trouble. So Gov. Hochul, Speaker [Carl] Heastie, Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, majority leader, please rollback the bail reform," Phil Wong, president of the Chinese-American Citizens Alliance, said during a Lower East Side rally.

"Listen to Eric Adams, have a special session and discuss it and talk about it. ... You cannot just ignore it. This is the data. People getting shot and killed, robbing. That's your data. Read it," he said.

Frank Garcia, the head of the National Association of Hispanic Chambers of Commerce, said the city's small business owners are so upset that they're ready to ditch Democratic incumbent Kathy Hochul in favor of Republican challenger, Rep. Lee Zeldin, in the November election for governor.

Hochul, during an unrelated Albany press conference, said she and the legislature will not revisit the bail law this year. She said she wanted to see how judges use revisions made to the bail law earlier this year giving them more discretion to detain recidivist criminals and defendants who have a history of gun violence.

"I'm willing to revisit everything, but let's see whether or not the system can start functioning the way we intended," Hochul told reporters. "The legislature meets again next January and by that time we'll be able to assess the real impact of our changes," she added. nypost.com

NYC's 'Recidivist No. 1'
Meet the NYC shoplifter with 101 arrests - and let go almost every time
The career crook whom Mayor Adams dubbed "Recidivist No. 1" as a symbol of the city's revolving door of criminal justice has been identified as Harold Gooding, a 53-year-old serial shoplifter - who has been arrested 101 times.

"How many crimes do you think he really committed? Two hundred? Three hundred? A thousand?" NYPD Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael LiPetri said at a news conference Wednesday. "And guess what? He's walking around the streets of New York City today, probably committing another crime as we speak."

On Wednesday, sources identified Gooding as the unnamed person at the top of the NYPD's list of the "Worst of the Worst" repeat offenders - let free again and again thanks to New York's broken bail-reform law.

Gooding has served three prison terms, starting with a one- to three-year sentence for an attempted-burglary conviction in Brooklyn in 1994, according to state records. In an alleged string of robberies this year, Gooding shoplifted from a Target store in Tribeca multiple times - all while wearing the same distinctive white hat, the Manhattan DA's Office charged. nypost.com

   Op-Ed: It's Gov. Hochul's duty to call a special session on NY bail reform

Amazon Streams "Philly D.A."
The Progressive Who Defined the Progressive Movement

'Philly D.A.'

Follow the rise of the progressive movement in the most incarcerated city in the U.S.

Amazon's season description:

"Go inside the tumultuous first term of Philadelphia's unapologetic D.A., whose sweeping reforms on everything from bail policy to probation earned him the admiration of progressives, the ire of law enforcement, and division within his own office."

From mass incarceration, to a hidden file on 25 Cops on a Do Not Call to Testify list due to a host of issues of dishonesty and possible criminal activity.

Backed by a $1.2M George Soros donation Larry Krasner, a former 25 year civil rights attorney, intends to turn the system upside down. And quite vocal about his absolute commitment to the progressive movement.

Retail theft is a major discussion point hot button throughout the series.

This 8 60-minute episodes follows Krasner's campaign and first year in office. amazon.com

National Guard Called Into Flooded Kentucky as Crime & Looting Surge
National Guard called into Kentucky to patrol after 6 people arrested for looting
Six people have been arrested for looting and stealing in Perry County since flooding struck last week and Kentucky National Guard military police were headed to at least two counties Wednesday in an effort to curb crime. Perry County Sheriff Joe Engle said six people had been arrested for looting and stealing since last week.

"Keeping people from stealing and looting" and tending to the welfare of flood victims were two of the focuses of the sheriff's office on Wednesday, he said. "We've called and asked for extra law enforcement personnel," said Engle. Kentucky State Police and the Kentucky National Guard are responding.

In a statement, Breathitt County Sheriff John Hollan said he had spoken with a Kentucky National Guard representative. "The 223rd Military Police will be patrolling in the county, due to the imposed curfew and looting," said Hollan. Perry County hasn't yet set a curfew to thwart looting, Engle said. Breathitt County has joined other counties and towns, including Letcher County and Hindman, in enacting curfews that generally run from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. aol.com  foxlexington.com

The 'Defund' Impact on Crime & Policing
New Orleans Police Response Times Up 2½ Hours as Officers Flee Force
It is one of the most startling crime stats to emerge in recent months: It takes New Orleans police an average of 2½ hours to respond to a 9-1-1 call, according to a new analysis presented to the City Council on Wednesday.

That figure, calculated by the data firm AH Datalytics and presented to the council's criminal justice committee, was determined after looking at response times for all calls - including low-priority incidents, like fender-benders or stolen cars where residents are in little danger.

Current Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson has far fewer officers at his disposal. After modest gains to the force's size that peaked in 2019, officers have been leaving in droves since the pandemic began. The NOPD currently has 974 officers, a 9% decline since the end of 2021, according to Asher. officer.com

Chesa Boudin says he won't run for S.F. D.A. this year

Progressives want us to give up on New York. NYC is fighting back

US: 93.7M Cases - 1M Dead - 88.7M Recovered
Worldwide: 587M Cases - 6.4M Dead - 557.1M Recovered

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 360   Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 787
*Red indicates change in total deaths

12,500 COVID Deaths in July
US stuck in a 'horrible plateau' of COVID-19 deaths, experts say
"COVID is over" might trend within social media circles, but weekly U.S. death tolls tell a different story. The pace of COVID-19 deaths has remained relatively steady since May, despite an uptick in July to about 400 a day, according to a USA TODAY analysis of Johns Hopkins University data.

In July, more than 12,500 Americans died of COVID-19, according to the USA TODAY analysis. Coronavirus deaths are similar to the number of influenza deaths normally reported during peak season, said David Dowdy, epidemiologist at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. A bad flu season in the USA could see more than 50,000 deaths.

That doesn't mean COVID-19 mortality has reached that of flu, he said, as peak flu season lasts only about three months. Spread over the course of the year, Dowdy said, there would be about four times as many COVID-19 deaths than flu deaths. usatoday.com

White House declares monkeypox a public health emergency
The Biden administration on Thursday officially declared monkeypox a public health emergency, a move that's aimed at freeing up emergency funding and improving distribution of vaccines and treatments.

"We are prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus, and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus," Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said during a briefing.

The announcement comes amid intense criticism that the Biden administration failed to recognize the severity of the outbreak, leading to shortages of vaccine doses and diagnostic tests even as demand has soared.

Some public health experts fear the U.S. lost its opportunity to contain and even eliminate the virus.

The administration has been under pressure to declare a public health emergency from health advocates and congressional Democrats who represent some of the hardest hit states. thehill.com

Dr. Fauci: If you aren't up-to-date on Covid boosters, you're 'going to get into trouble'

Biden-Harris Administration Releases Two New Reports on Long COVID

Non-Emergency 'Slimmed-Down Version' of COVID Rules Coming From Cal-OSHA Soon

Retailers a Top Target of Cybercriminals
How to Keep Your Business Safe From Cyber Intruders
Most retailers are well aware that hackers pose a threat to their computing systems; yet, conceptualizing the form that cybercrime will take can be overwhelming, to say the least. On average, intruders spend 10 months in a system before being discovered.

Finding Vulnerabilities

The most valuable information that businesses have to protect is that of their customers and losing consumer trust on account of cybercrime can be crippling. According to a Cisco study from 2020, 26 percent of consumers stopped doing business with a retailer out of fear for the privacy of their data.

Moreover, retailers are particularly vulnerable to intrusion given their broad surface area and multiple points of online interface. In regards to some of the challenges posed by cyber attacks on retailers, Futoransky said: "If the attackers are there for quite some time, it may be really difficult to analyze and understand what's the actual scope of the attack and how much information was actually compromised."

Prevention Strategies

Many cybersecurity companies employ front-end prevention systems such as firewalls to keep hackers from gaining access to a client's data. These firewalls monitor and control incoming and outgoing network access based on predetermined security rules to establish a barrier separating trusted networks from untrusted ones.

BitTrap, on the other hand, utilizes more unconventional tactics to tempt hackers to expose themselves once they are in the system. This different point of attack operates off of the assumption that prevention tactics will still have holes that allow hackers to get into a client's system undetected.

To catch intruders, BitTrap casts a wide net with these monetary incentives by placing them on "all of the endpoints, all of the workstations, and all of the notebooks from the employees of the company." This creates an interconnected system of devices that is then monitored by BitTrap for intrusion.

Going Forward

In terms of how frequent cyber attacks are, Futoransky estimates that roughly three out of every 1,000 devices will deal with some type of intrusion every year. Cyber attacks may not be as tangible as an armed robbery, but they can be equally as destructive and costly for your business. dealerscope.com

'Significant & Sophisticated Cybersecurity Breach' at DOJ
DOJ now relies on paper for its most sensitive court documents, official says

A top DOJ official said potential vulnerabilities in the online case management system means that "going online is not always the best thing."

The Justice Department has filed its most sensitive court documents on paper since January 2021 to avoid any chance of a breach or vulnerability in electronic filing systems compromising its high stakes cases.

In an interview this week, Deputy Assistant Attorney General for National Security Adam Hickey told CyberScoop the department implemented the policy last year but did not connect that change to any specific breach or cybersecurity event.

However, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts did reveal "an apparent compromise" of the court system's electronic case files on Jan 6, 2021.

That breach received more attention last week when House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., revealed the U.S. federal court system is contending with "an incredibly significant and sophisticated cybersecurity breach." He added that the incident dated to early 2020 and that it "had lingering impacts" on the DOJ and other agencies.

Nadler said he only learned about the breach in March and was struck by the "startling breadth and scope of the court's document management system's security failure."

While Hickey would not confirm or deny that the incident Nadler referenced had occurred, he told CyberScoop on Tuesday that he has been working with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts to improve security protocols for highly sensitive documents since January 2021.

"Our sealed documents are obviously very important to us," Hickey said. "That's going to include everything from search warrants, subpoenas, non-disclosure orders, sealed charges [and] arrest warrants. Protecting them is an important part of what we need and I'm glad we're working with the courts to ensure it."

Hickey said the takeaway for the court system is that sometimes the old-fashioned way of doing things is safer. He added that the paper-only system applies only to the most sensitive sealed documents as opposed to all of them. cyberscoop.com

Huawei's 'National Security' Threat
China, Huawei, and the eavesdropping threat

Huawei is an espionage threat not because of what it has done but because of what it can do.

China and Chinese government-supported companies like Huawei will look at every avenue to advance the long-term goals of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). With this in mind, CNN's exclusive report on the FBI's investigation into how Huawei's equipment could be used to disrupt and listen to U.S. nuclear arsenal communications should not have come as a surprise.

Is Huawei a national security threat?

The U.S. intelligence community certainly thinks Huawei is a national security threat and included the admonishment to avoid Huawei hardware in the U.S. telecommunications infrastructure at the Global Threats and National Security briefing before the Senate Intelligence Committee in February 2018.

No doubt the IC's admonishment that Huawei's equipment provided China "the capacity to maliciously modify or steal information" and "the capacity to conduct undetected espionage," as voiced by FBI Director Christopher Wray, served as an impetus for CNN to dig into the story. What they found, and shared in March 2019, was that Huawei's Midwest presence was indeed in proximity to U.S. military sites. In one case a Huawei cellular tower was less than one-third of a mile from a U.S. missile silo.

The FCC issued a ruling in November 2019 that effectively banned Huawei from U.S. networks, under the rubric of it being a national security threat. Yet those entities which had invested in Huawei hardware were not required to immediately remove the equipment and a fund was created to help them purchase new hardware and pull Huawei iron from their racks. The then-acting FCC Chair, Jessica Rosenworcel characterized the FCC effort as "perhaps the most significant federally funded effort to rebuild and secure commercial communications networks nationwide. This means we will evaluate network after network, base station after base station, and router after router until we have rooted out equipment that could undermine our national security."

Fast-forward two years, and we have CNN's expose, which describes the possible without providing any evidence of information collection, network control, or interference with U.S. communications by Huawei or China has actually happened. But in the world of intelligence, capability present changes the calculus from an "if" discussion to a "when" discussion. csoonline.com

Academia's AI and Biometrics Work
Ethical AI and biometrics move forward. More industry, academia effort needed

A series of initiatives have recently been unveiled by businesses and nonprofits showing different approaches to and perspectives on artificial intelligence and how it relates to biometrics.

From a slow awakening to ethical responsibilities by industry and researchers witnessed at this year's Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference, to the launch of an AI ethics advisory board at Northeastern University, it seems the ethical implications of AI and biometrics are getting due consideration.

And yet, the road toward ethical, inclusive AI is still long, according to a Stanford University professor. Fortunately, new generations in the industry are being provided with the tools to help research move in this direction, with the Mark Cuban Foundation recently announcing two high school AI bootcamps in Pittsburgh.

Trends that emerged during the 2022 Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition Conference, for instance, conference organizers created updated ethics guidelines outlining some negative impacts of computer vision.

AI insiders from Northeastern University have created a new AI ethics advisory board to oversee the expansion of AI apps within the school and beyond. The board will act as a consultancy for companies dealing with AI ethical questions, creating smaller subcommittees to address specific queries.

Stanford professor looks at inclusive design for AI and is exploring the importance of inclusive design in AI apps. and gave the example of voice biometric systems, and how demographic and gender biases affect them. biometricsupdate.com

Phishing campaign targets Coinbase wallet holders to steal cryptocurrency
Attackers are sending out spoofed Coinbase emails to harvest personal credentials and use them to log into users' legitimate accounts in real-time.

How can organizations stay ahead of cybersecurity challenges?

CISOs Are Focused on These 3 Trends, Are You?