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If you are using alarms with legacy 3G wireless communicators, it's time to upgrade your alarm system now. Leading cellular networks are discontinuing support for 3G in 2022 and your alarms will no longer be able to connect to monitoring centers in the event of emergencies. Find out how upgrading your alarm system with Interface can give you enhanced security at a lower cost.

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The Evolving Factors That Fuel C-Store Crime
The Changing Winds of Convenience-Store Crime
Retail-crime seasonality doesn't just stop at the literal seasons; cultural, political and technological factors heavily influence retail risk mitigation programs. And like the seasons, each can change on a large scale in a matter of months.

It's up to c-store leaders to adequately foresee these winds of change and invest in solutions to combat revolving-and evolving-crime waves.

States Divided

There are remarkably few retail crime statutes enforced on a federal level. Therefore, the vast majority of the burden falls to the state level. This leads retail brands to run into the challenging dynamic of dealing with different laws for different states.

In 2021, the pendulum in many states tends to swing toward the more lax enforcement option, resulting-at a very high level-in a generationally cyclical scenario. Just like rain, snow and cold keeps crime low, so, too, does a local government with strong retail crime enforcement laws.

Organized Chaos

ORC groups successfully identify and exploit the gaps in a retail operation. Because many convenience-store chains don't understand or are unwilling to adapt to the advancing nature of crime compared to decades ago, this type of crime has skyrocketed in recent years, resulting in gargantuan shrink levels, profit losses and hits to consumer perception.

The Power of Data

While employee training is critical, the answer to most trends in retail crime lies in technology: namely, analytics. Whether an external consulting company or a team of internal data scientists, experts are now able to build custom tools and platforms that look at consumer fraud in real time, provide accurate information into abnormalities across stores and provide recommendations and solutions if things don't look right. cspdailynews.com

San Francisco Putting More Cops in Popular Shopping Areas
SF police increasing patrols in popular tourist areas, but will it be enough?
Despite the pandemic, San Francisco is expected to see more than 15 million tourists this year Those tourists could pump $3.5 billion into local businesses. One of the keys to Building a Better Bay Area is making sure that those tourist feel safe and that they will want to come back.

That's why San Francisco is putting more officers on the streets in popular parts of the city like Union Square, Chinatown and Fisherman's Wharf. But will it be enough? And what is being done to curb the brazen thefts from stores that is being seen worldwide?

When you say shopping in style in San Francisco -- you're saying Union Square. Gucci, Hermes, Neiman Marcus, it's an outdoor show that glows with color.

The new trend everyone has been talking about -- theft, like one in early July. Police say an organized group swarmed the Neiman Marcus, stealing tens of thousands of dollars in designer handbags.

Despite these high-profile incidents, SFPD crime data shows declining incidents of property crime in the city so far this year. As of July 4, larceny theft is down 8.8% this year compared to the same point last year. In the same time period, robbery is down 11.9%, yet burglary is up 4.2%. In 2020, larceny theft was down 39% year-over-year, according to SFPD crime statistics.

Most of the stores in this area have increased their security, some even hire off duty police officers. But as retailers struggle with brazen robberies and thefts, many luxury retailers are now requiring appointments or keeping pandemic capacity limits to restrict the number of people inside stores.

"The last guy I talked to at one of the Union Square meetings said he liked the lines because it slowed down the thefts," said SFPD Sgt. Carmichael Reyes. abc7news.com

Gun Thefts Drop By 71%
Firearm Industry-ATF Partnership Leads to Decrease in Gun Thefts
New reports from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) show the partnership between law enforcement and the firearm industry to reduce criminal firearm retailer break-ins, burglaries and gun thefts are working.

Firearm sales in 2021 remain at a close pace to the all-time record of 2020. While Americans from all backgrounds are voting for the Second Amendment with their wallets and purses at the gun store retail counter, gun retailers are finding more success at protecting their businesses and communities by stepping up voluntary security improvements.

Results to Celebrate

During the first six months of 2021, ATF reported 111 firearm retail burglaries that resulted in an estimated 959 stolen firearms. The same six-month stretch in 2020 saw 284 burglaries and more than 3,700 stolen firearms. These numbers correlate to 61 percent fewer burglaries and a 71 percent reduction in stolen firearms. Every criminal break-in that is thwarted and every firearm that remains secured and out of the hands of criminals means safer communities throughout the United States.

ATF Acting Director Marvin G. Richardson praised the partnership between ATF, firearm retailers and the firearm industry. "This data demonstrates that our collaborative efforts to secure FFL inventories are making a positive difference. It is yet another way that ATF works diligently to reduce violent crime in our communities."

NSSF's Larry Keane echoed Richardson's sentiments. "This data shows that the firearm industry's proactive partnerships with the ATF are yielding the results that make our communities safer. This is what effective firearm safety looks like," Keane said. ammoland.com

Urban DA Coalition Formed to Fight Violence Surge
Broady, Georgia DAs look for a way out of COVID crime surge
Gathered in the bottom floor of a strip mall off Roswell Road, some of Georgia's most prominent prosecutors brainstormed Thursday over a way out of the crime surge they say is gripping the state.

From Cobb to Columbus, and Atlanta to Savannah, the district attorneys of the state's most populous areas agreed they've faced an overwhelming spike in crime since the COVID-19 pandemic began last year. The words "non-stop," "overwhelmed," and "back to back" ping-ponged around the room for over an hour.

Thus was the tone of an inaugural meeting of an "urban district attorney's" coalition, a "brain trust" as Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis called it. Cobb District Attorney Flynn Broady has been tapped as the group's vice-chair.

Broady told the MDJ he was recruited through a series of conversations with fellow prosecutors, who found themselves facing similar predicaments: rising homicides, gang activity, and domestic violence.

While Cobb has not faced near the rise in crime (or the ensuing political firestorm) as neighboring Atlanta, Broady said he was hesitant to pin the big city as the root of the problem.

Being the group's first sit-down, the discussion focused largely on delegating and selecting committees to focus on various problem areas. Among those were youth violence, diversionary programs, and "conviction integrity" - ensuring past cases have been properly handled and that innocent people are not unjustly serving time. news.yahoo.com

Study: Community-Oriented Policing Has Positive Outcomes
Community-Oriented Policing Shows Promise in New Haven, Conn.
Community-oriented policing is a policing strategy designed to encourage cooperative police-public relationships through a variety of positive nonenforcement interactions, such as community meetings and neighborhood watch initiatives. In 2019, the city of New Haven, Conn., implemented a community-oriented policing intervention to increase public trust and improve perceptions of police legitimacy (Peyton et al. 2019a).

Specifically, this intervention focused on the importance of 1) establishing common connections with residents, 2) emphasizing cooperation toward common goals (such as police needing residents' help to make the community safe), and 3) forming personalized interactions, as an approach to building public trust and enhancing police legitimacy. Overall, the goal of the intervention was to examine whether a single positive, nonenforcement interaction with a uniformed police officer caused meaningful changes in New Haven residents' general views about police legitimacy.

At the 21-day follow-up, Peyton and colleagues (2019a) found that residents in intervention households who received the community-oriented policing intervention reported more-positive overall attitudes toward police, compared with residents in control households. This difference was statistically significant. crimesolutions.ojp.gov

Caitlyn Jenner tears into Gov. Gavin Newsom over rampant crime in California

Oakland community leaders call on Gov. Newsom to help with crime spike
 

From Russia with Love
Ransomware gangs are working with Russian intelligence services, report says
Russian intelligence services worked with prominent ransomware gangs to compromise U.S. government and government-affiliated organizations, according to new research from cybersecurity firm Analyst1.

Two Russian intelligence bureaus - the Federal Security Service, or FSB, and Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR - collaborated with individuals in "multiple cybercriminal organizations," security analysts with the firm say in the report. The research indicates these cybercriminals helped Russian intelligence develop and deploy custom malware targeting American companies that serve U.S. military clients.

The hacking groups used a variation of the so-called Ryuk ransomware - used for attacks on large enterprises - called "Sidoh," created specifically for espionage, according to Analyst1. The code was launched sometime between June 2019 and January 2020 and hid in the background of Windows machines, silently harvesting keystrokes and sensitive documents.

One attack described in the report was executed by a group dubbed EvilCorp in October 2020. Another group known as SilverFish targeted the same victim only two months later using the same technical infrastructure, hacking tools and malicious scripts. The groups used a technique called "domain fronting" to hide their activity. They likely relied on a time-tested hacking tool called Mimikatz to infiltrate targeted systems, then distributed malware using a PowerShell Windows application.

"Smoke, the smell of gunpowder and a bullet casing"

DiMaggio said his team used proprietary and open-source information to identify individual ransomware gang members with known ties to Russian intelligence services. The researchers then manually diagrammed connections between individuals, FBI and law enforcement records and high-profile cybercriminal groups.

According to Analyst1, most attacks were executed in several stages. The FSB "employed multiple individuals who conducted ransomware attacks and are affiliated with Russian-based criminal organizations," the report states. cbsnews.com

Daily Ransomware Attacks
Connected devices increasingly at risk as new ransomware attacks are reported almost daily
Ordr released a report on the state of connected devices. The 2021 study addresses pandemic-related cybersecurity challenges, including the growth of connected devices and related increase of security risks from these devices as threat actors took advantage of chaos to launch attacks.

42% of connected devices were agentless or un-agentable devices
The number of agentless and un-agentable devices increased to 42% in this year's report (compared to 32% of agentless or un-agentable devices in 2020). These devices include medical and manufacturing devices that are critical to business operations along with network devices, IP phones, video surveillance cameras and facility devices (such as badge readers) that are not designed with security in mind, cannot be patched, and cannot support endpoint security agents.

With almost half of devices in the network that are either agentless or un-agentable, organizations need to complement their endpoint security strategy with a network-based security approach to discover and secure these devices.

Pelotons, Sonos, Alexas and Teslas discovered in the network
As a sign of the times, popular consumer "devices" are often connected to the enterprise network, including Pelotons, Sonos speakers, gaming machines, Alexas and Teslas.

While the usage of unsanctioned shadow IoT devices was highlighted in the 2020 report, there are 2 times more personal devices this year, increasing the threat landscape and delivering a wealth of data for threat actors to use to profile targets.

Outdated OSs on connected devices present the greatest risk, especially in healthcare
About 19% of deployments with devices running outdated operating systems Windows 7 and older have been identified, and almost 34% of deployments with devices running Windows 8 and Windows 10, which are expected to end-of-life in 2023 and 2025, respectively. helpnetsecurity.com

Ransomware Attacks Just Keep Coming
Hackers stole client info, work materials in Accenture ransomware attack
Ransomware hackers began leaking Accenture data after the consulting giant suffered a security incident where the perpetrators made off with client-related documents and work materials.

The gang, known as LockBit 2.0, has threatened to leak further after providing purported proof of the breach. Accenture acknowledged the attack on Wednesday, but has downplayed its severity.

"Through our security controls and protocols, we identified irregular activity in one of our environments," an Accenture spokesperson said. "We immediately contained the matter and isolated the affected servers. We fully restored our affected servers from back up. There was no impact on Accenture's operations, or on our clients' systems."

In an internal memo, Accenture said it noticed the "security incident" on July 30.

"While the perpetrators were able to acquire certain documents that reference a small number of clients and certain work materials we had prepared for clients, none of the information is of a highly sensitive nature," reads the memo.

Even as Accenture said the extent of the harm was minimal, the ransomware attack on the company attracted considerable social media attention and speculation. The Fortune 500 company had $44 billion in revenue in 2020, employs more than half a million people around the globe and does work in the cybersecurity field. cyberscoop.com

30% of Ransom Demands Top $30M
Ransomware Attacks and Payment Demands Soar
In the past 12 months, 30% of ransom demands topped $30 million, but victims who negotiated were able to drive demands down significantly.

The only real question about ransomware trends these days is not whether there has been any let-up in the relentless pace of threat activity, but rather by how much attack volumes, attack scope, and ransom demands increased over a particular period.

A new report this week from Barracuda offers some fresh insight on all fronts. Between August 2020 and July 2021, researchers from the security firm identified and analyzed a total of 121 ransomware incidents - a 64% increase over the prior year. Thirty percent of those incidents involved ransom demands of $30 million or more; 6% topped a staggering $50 million.

The security vendor found ransomware operators are increasingly focusing on supply chain attacks, such as those on trusted software vendors and IT service providers, with the goal of compromising multiple organizations via a single attack. The most dramatic example of such an attack in recent months was the one on Kaseya in July, which resulted in ransomware being deployed on several of the company's downstream managed service provider customers. darkreading.com