Inside the Battle: How Reducing Theft Penalties
Impacts Community Safety

California's Prop 47 & Raising Felony Thresholds

The negative consequences of California's Prop 47 and the raising of felony thresholds across the U.S. have been unmistakable for retailers. Nearly all are experiencing a rise in shoplifting - some by as much as 15%. With more states evaluating similar measures, what's a company's defense?

Kathleen Smith, VP of Asset Protection, Albertsons-Safeway, and Anne Marie Schubert, District Attorney, Sacramento County, discuss how these laws have impacted employee safety and violence in stores, and what retail LP investigators and executives can do to make shoplifting and ORC cases easier to prosecute.

Episode Sponsored By:

Karl Langhorst - ALTO Alliance - Quick Take 8

Karl Langhorst, Executive Vice President, ALTO US, talks with Joe LaRocca about increased felony thresholds, repeat shoplifting offenders, and how ALTO Alliance's three-pronged approach - based on intelligent prosecution, deterrent marketing, and comprehensive analytics - can help break the recidivist cycle.

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DETEX Wins Most Improved Safety Program Award

DETEX Corporation, a leading manufacturer and supplier of life safety and security door hardware equipment for commercial buildings, was presented a safety award for "The Most Improved Safety Program" from Safety First Consulting on September 26, 2018.

"We are extremely proud of DETEX Corporation's leadership and hard work through a challenging period of expansion and growth to establish and continuously improve their safety program," says Robert Box, President of Safety First Consulting. "Out of all our clients this year, DETEX stands alone with regard to the speed and effectiveness they have identified and resolved potential safety hazards."

DETEX Corporation, established in 1923, is headquartered in New Braunfels, Texas where the main production facility is located.

"People are what make DETEX Corporation a leader in what we do, and investing in a safe workplace is an investment in our employees' well-being," says John Blodgett, President, DETEX Corporation. "By establishing a firm foundation of a solid safety program, we are better positioned for growth and continued excellent service to our customers."

"The award is a reflection of the hard work and commitment DETEX leadership and employees put forth to enhance safety efforts while improving efficiency," said Box. "We are happy for the DETEX family in attaining this fantastic accomplishment."

ABOUT DETEX
Detex Corporation, Inc., through its subsidiaries, designs, manufactures, and markets life safety and security door hardware for commercial buildings. The company also provides integrated door security systems, such as door control systems and components. In addition, it offers safety, security, and risk management solutions, which include proximity-based systems for guard tour verification and other data acquisition tasks; TopGuard Patrol, a guard tour reporting software for GCS data acquisition units; watchclocks; and quartz watchclocks. Further, the company provides optical and mechanical turnstiles, such as full height turnstiles and tailgate detection systems; door management alarms, including pushbuttons/key switches, annunciators, and accessories; tailgate detection products; and annunciators. It sells and services its products through a network of authorized distributors. The company was founded in 1923 and is based in New Braunfels, Texas.

ABOUT SAFETY FIRST CONSULTING
Safety First Consulting helps businesses identify OSHA compliance issues in their workplaces, manage their safety programs, and we become accountable for the results. In addition to offering custom written safety programs for companies, Safety First Consulting provides required safety training, industrial hygiene sampling, noise sampling, and workplace inspections.

Three Security Lessons to Keep in Mind During the R-CISC Summit
By Heather Howland, VP of Marketing, Preempt

It's never been more important for retailers to harden their cybersecurity posture - especially given the documented trend of intensified attacks on retailers during the rapidly-approaching holiday season. We're excited to attend the 2018 Retail Cyber Intelligence Summit in Denver and look forward to learning from and sharing perspective with the R-CISC community, including some of the top retail companies in the world.

At Preempt, we work with numerous retail companies, including brands like Charlotte Russe and Scotts Miracle-Gro, and we place tremendous importance on closely following the needs of our retail partners and customers. Many of the challenges facing retail are unique across industries. Here are three key areas to keep in mind:

Expect increased interest in retail from malicious actors during the holiday season.
The retail industry's seasonal nature means hackers have particular times where they know disguising their activity is easier than others. We already know that attacks against retailers are on the rise, and a July report found that U.S. retailers lead the world in data breaches.

Retail enterprises represent unique target for attackers, given the wealth of real-time personal data many maintain around customers, as well as complex supplier and partner relationships.

Shifting assets to cloud shouldn't mean a weaker security posture.
Retailers are increasingly shifting assets to the cloud, in an effort to improve operations, increase visibility into the supply chain and overall business, and scale at greater speeds, among other reasons. Analyst firm Markets and Markets estimates the size of the retail cloud market will grow to more than $28 billion in 2021, up from approximately $11 billion in 2016. As organizations move to the cloud, they often sacrifice visibility and security, with cybersecurity solutions increasingly siloed. Retailers beware: with complex IT environments, a transition to cloud should not mean losing visibility, access or control.

Education is key: Every member of your organization should be cyber aware.
Every employee is on the frontline of your organization when it comes to cybersecurity. With phishing, malware and stolen credentials on the rise, you need to equip your organization's personnel, and not just security or IT, with an understanding of the rapidly evolving threat landscape. Invest in training and education, particularly with the holiday season approaching. r-cisc.org

The Massive Facebook Hack May Have Spread Further Than Facebook
The social network's Single Sign-On feature was easily exploited
Last Friday's Facebook hack affecting 50 million users drew all the condemnation and blame you'd expect from another high-profile security breach, but the attack wasn't merely confined to Facebook. Many of the third-party apps that people log into via Facebook were potentially caught up in the mess as well.

By exploiting the social network's code and obtaining access tokens to commandeer Facebook profiles without a password, hackers made ample use of Facebook's Single Sign-On (SSO) feature and potentially scores of data stored on different websites.

SSO is the easy and increasingly common way to log into apps like Spotify, Tinder and Airbnb with your Facebook profile, in lieu of creating multiple passwords for every account. It's a quick and convenient method for managing multiple passwords, but it can also make those accounts more susceptible to hacks, as last Friday's episode illustrated. popularmechanics.com

When Security Researchers Pose as Cybercrooks, Who Can Tell the Difference?
A ridiculous number of companies are exposing some or all of their proprietary and customer data by putting it in the cloud without any kind of authentication needed to read, alter or destroy it. When cybercriminals are the first to discover these missteps, usually the outcome is a demand for money in return for the stolen data. But when these screw-ups are unearthed by security professionals seeking to make a name for themselves, the resulting publicity often can leave the breached organization wishing they'd instead been quietly extorted by anonymous crooks. krebsonsecurity.com

Voice Phishing Scams Are Getting More Clever
Most of us have been trained to be wary of clicking on links and attachments that arrive in emails unexpected, but it's easy to forget scam artists are constantly dreaming up innovations that put a new shine on old-fashioned telephone-based phishing scams. Think you're too smart to fall for one? Think again: Even technology experts are getting taken in by some of the more recent schemes (or very nearly). krebsonsecurity.com

10 Tactics For Teaching Cybersecurity Best Practices To Your Whole Company

Employees Share Average of 6 Passwords With Co-Workers

Walmart District LP Manager Fined Tens of Thousands of Dollars
Admitted to Selling Contaminated Food After Fort McMurray Wildfire
Walmart Canada and its district loss prevention manager were fined $20,000 each after pleading guilty Monday to 10 charges of selling contaminated food following the May 2016 Fort McMurray wildfire. The retailer has also agreed to donate $130,000 to the Red Cross.

Walmart and Kenyon admitted to displaying, storing and selling food that was not fit for human consumption after the wildfire. The food included pickles, beef jerky, spices, pretzels, mints, stuffing mixes, vinegar, salad dressings, corn starch and yeast.

In accepting the guilty plea, Judge Charles Gardner told court he hoped it would deter future offenders and protect vulnerable populations such as people recovering from large-scale disasters.

Outside the Walmart on Monday, customers said they were disappointed to hear the company would sell products that were potentially unsafe. cbc.ca

Ontario government announces cannabis retail rules
The Ontario government says it will not put a cap on pot shops when it starts licensing and regulating the province's private cannabis retail marketplace.

The Progressive Conservative government says a bill set to be introduced Thursday will appoint the Alcohol and Gaming Commission of Ontario as regulator for the marketplace, giving it the power to grant -- and potentially revoke -- licences as well as enforce provincial rules on cannabis sales. Breaching provincial rules on cannabis sales would preclude someone from ever obtaining a licence in the future, it said.

The province said Wednesday that anyone looking to open a pot shop will have to apply for both a retail-operator licence and a retail store authorization for each potential location.

The government announced last month that it would sell recreational cannabis online when pot is legalized in October, with private retail stores to follow next year. ctvnews.ca

Canada: The Path to Cannabis Legalization
The Private Retail Sales Model
The previous government had planned to implement a retail model similar to the Liquor Control Board of Ontario called the Ontario Cannabis Stores (OCS). However, on Aug. 13, the new government announced that it would introduce a model for the sale of cannabis that includes an online retail channel by the OCS as of Oct. 17 and a private retail sales model for licensed retailers by April 1, 2019.

It has also been announced that municipalities will be given a short period of time to opt out of cannabis retailers within their boundaries. More information on opting out has yet to be provided. What also remains unclear is whether cannabis retailers will be restricted in their proximity to schools.

Impairment Isn't Acceptable at Work

Educators and employers can continue to take the position that impairment at school or in the workplace is not acceptable. The legal access regime described above does not provide anyone in Ontario with a legal right to consume or possess cannabis on school premises or to be impaired at school without any recourse to the school or employer. If a student or an employee is a medical cannabis user, the matter will be treated like any other accommodation of a disability. Smoking and vaping will be subject to applicable legislation. shrm.org

Ontario could see up to 1,000 private pot shops after cannabis legalization

Many Sask. pot stores won't be ready to open on legalization day

U.S.-Canada Trade Deal: The Retail Impact

Shopping online? Canadians can thank new trade deal for $150 duty-free limit
Canada, the United States and Mexico have signed a new free trade agreement that may benefit a lot of Canadian consumers wanting to shop online. The new deal, called United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), raises Canada's duty-free level from C$20 to C$150. It also raises the sales tax from C$20 to C$40.  globalnews.ca

Canadians shouldn't bet on lower dairy prices under new trade deal

Canadian Tire Responds to New United States Mexico Canada Agreement

Canada Store Openings
● West Kelowna to get a HomeSense store
● Louis Vuitton Marks 35 Years in Canada with Standalone Store Expansion
● Danier' Opening Stores into New Markets as it Expands Nationally


Amazon plans third Metro Vancouver fulfillment centre; 700 full-time jobs

Lululemon turns to tech to stay ahead of the field
 

Fraud attacks on retailers rose 13% in 2017
Digital goods fraud attack rate increased 167%
Fraud attacks increased by 13% in 2017, according to the 2018 Fraud Attack Index from Forter. The report noted a 31% increase in account takeovers as of the third quarter of last year. Policy abuse, also known as compliance abuse - wherein merchants are cheated through coupons, discount codes, reward programs or multiple accounts - rose 93% in the later quarters of 2017. Return abuse saw a 119% rise in last year's fourth quarter.

Among key categories, from Q1 2017 to Q1 2018: digital good - which include gift cards, e-books, music, gaming and business-oriented services like hosting and software solutions - saw a fraud attack rate increase of 167%. Meanwhile, fraud attacks on electronics rose 66%, food and beverage increased 60%, jewelry and luxury products rose 38%, and apparel and accessories went up 7%, Forter reported. retaildive.com

Formjacking attacks spike as Magecart sets sites on ecommerce
Threat actors have shown a major uptick in formjacking attacks targeting e-commerce sites with researchers blocking nearly a quarter million attempts since mid-August 2018.

Formjacking is an attack in which malicious JavaScript code designed to steal payment card information along with other data from payment forms is injected into the checkout web pages of e-commerce sites.

Although this is not a new technique, researchers noted attacks have increased dramatically with Symantec researchers saying they are blocking an average of 6,368 attempts daily as threat actors like Magecart is target large e-commerce businesses like Ticketmaster, British Airways, and Newegg.

Magecart has been active since at least 2015 and injects web-based card skimmers onto websites to steal payment card data and other sensitive information from online payment forms. scmagazine.com

Raleigh-based e-retailer appears in court on criminal contempt charges
The owner of a Raleigh based e-commerce site was in court Monday accused of criminal contempt after the attorney general says he violated a judge's order by taking money without the court's permission from his company's accounts that he was supposed to use to pay back victims.

Caleb Udophia ran the online retail business eRummagers -- a website that accrued hundreds of complaints customers and garnered an "F" rating from the Better Business Bureau. In court, Udophia was ordered by a judge to refund money to over 1,400 people who the state of North Carolina says were victimized by eRummagers. The state claims the refunds haven't taken place and charges that Udophia is taking money from the company's accounts and spending it on gym memberships, nightclubs, travel and groceries. cbs17.com

Younkers returns as online retailer, some hope stores return to Michigan

Kroger customers can pick up their online orders at Walgreens

Walmart Acquires Plus-Size E-Commerce Fashion Retailer Eloquii

None to report.

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