COVID Update

US: Over 7.6M Cases - 215K Dead - 4.9M Recovered
Worldwide: Over 35.8M Cases - 1M Dead - 27M Recovered

Private Industry Security Guard Deaths: 190   Law Enforcement Officer Deaths: 117
*Red indicates change in total deaths

Honoring New York's Fallen Heroes
NYPD honors 46 members who died of COVID-19 at St. Patrick's Cathedral
The NYPD on Monday honored 46 members who lost their lives to COVID-19 with a solemn service at St. Patrick's Cathedral. The 46 members include 13 school safety agents, 10 traffic enforcement agents, six detectives, three custodial assistants, three communications technicians, a police officer, a chief, a principal administrative associate, a police administrative aide, a senior police administrative aide and and six members from the auxiliary unit - three officers, a captain, lieutenant and sergeant. nypost.com

Cuomo, de Blasio clash on business closures in Brooklyn, Queens due to hot spots
Restaurants and other nonessential businesses in New York City's coronavirus hotspots will not immediately be forced to shut down under a plan of attack outlined Monday by Gov. Cuomo.

Cuomo rejected part of Mayor de Blasio's weekend proposal to shut down businesses in nine Brooklyn and Queens neighborhoods by Wednesday, saying instead that state police would help step up issuing tickets for failing to wear masks in those areas and that a closure plan for businesses had to be refined. nydailynews.com

  New York governor says decision still coming on NYC mayor's plan to close businesses in hot spots

  NYC Mayor Doubles Down on Shutdown Plan, Adds 13th ZIP to Watchlist as Daily Case Avg Tops 500

To rebound from the pandemic, Manhattan has to rethink retail real estate
Moving forward, Covid-19's effects on New York City's retail sector will play out differently in different neighborhoods. Perhaps counterintuitively, Manhattan's central business districts will face a longer-term struggle than other areas.

Although a market adjustment had begun pre-pandemic, retail in Manhattan now has a new set of vulnerabilities. Before the pandemic, Manhattan south of 59th Street contained more than 760,000 office workers, 89,000 hotel rooms and 640,000 residents. In other words, the restaurants, coffee shops and stores in NYC's central business districts rely heavily on nonresidents who abruptly vanished from the city in March. In addition, wealthy Manhattan residents left in droves.

In contrast, The Wall Street Journal found evidence that foot traffic in the other boroughs is bouncing back because of an increased daytime population of people working from home. Outer-borough retail corridors may be better positioned to recover than the Manhattan central business district. crainsnewyork.com

Anaheim, CA: Disneyland tests new contactless metal detectors to speed visitors through security checkpoints
Disneyland is trying out a new metal detector system that lets visitors walk through a security checkpoint on the west side of the Anaheim theme park resort without having to stop to empty their pockets, remove their smartphones or open their bags.

The Downtown Disney outdoor shopping center reopened in July with additional health and safety measures including mandatory face masks, temperature checks, reduced capacity, contactless payments, social distancing and enhanced sanitization.

The new Evolv Express contactless security scanners at Downtown Disney are similar to the no-touch bag check systems used at Disney Springs outdoor shopping center and Disney's Animal Kingdom theme park in Florida, according to WDW News Today.

The Evolv Express scanners can screen up to 3,600 people per hour - 10 times faster than traditional metal detectors, according to the company. The system uses real-time artificial intelligence software to detect guns and other weapons on people's bodies or in their bags. mercurynews.com

Families fight for compensation after meat plant workers die of COVID-19
Families of employees who died from COVID-19 while working at a JBS meatpacking plant in Colorado have made compensation claims that the company has denied based on an assertion that the workers were not infected at its facility.

Across the United States, more than 100 meat-processing plants operated by different companies, including Smithfield and Tyson, have had outbreaks of Covid-19, in part because of crowded working conditions. So far, more than 44,000 meatpacking workers have tested positive for the coronavirus, and more than 200 have died, according to the Food & Environment Report Network, which has been tracking the outbreak. nytimes.com

CDC reverses again, now says Covid-19 is 'sometimes' airborne
For the third time in less than a month, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has altered its guidance on how Covid-19 spreads. The agency said Monday that airborne transmission is possible, but that it's not the most common way the virus travels from person to person - a position that was published and then removed from its website in September.

The CDC updated its page on the spread of virus Monday to say that "some infections can be spread by exposure to virus in small droplets and particles that can linger in the air for minutes to hours. Those small droplets and particles in turn may be able to infect people who are farther than 6 feet away "from the person who is infected or after that person has left the space." nbcnews.com

Poll: Only half of Americans say they would get a Covid-19 vaccine if available
Only about half of Americans said they would try to get a Covid-19 vaccine once one is available, according to a new CNN Poll conducted by SSRS, and that percentage appears to have dropped since May. If a Covid-19 vaccine were widely available at a low cost, 51% of respondents in the survey said they would try to get vaccinated, 45% said they would not try and 4% had no opinion, according to poll findings released on Monday. cnn.com

Wisconsin business groups sue governor over coronavirus outbreak list

US restaurants are preparing for winter in the pandemic by snatching up outdoor heaters as demand spikes

Paris restricts mall, department store traffic to help curb COVID-19 resurgence
 

The Security Challenges of IoT

72% of businesses experienced increase in endpoint and IoT security incidents in the past 12 months
The ongoing global pandemic that has led to massive levels of remote work and an increased use of hybrid IT systems is leading to greater insecurity and risk exposure for enterprises. According to new data released by Cybersecurity Insiders, 72% of organizations experienced an increase in endpoint and IoT security incidents in the last year, while 56% anticipate their organization will likely be compromised due to an endpoint or IoT-originated attack with the next 12 months.

Alongside headline data that the majority experienced an endpoint and IoT security incident over the last 12 months, the top 3 issues were related to malware (78%), insecure network and remote access (61%), and compromised credentials (58%). Perhaps more concerning was that over forty percent of respondents (43%) expressed "moderate to unlikely means to discover, identify, and respond to unknown, unmanaged, or insecure devices accessing network and cloud resources." securitymagazine.com

'Shadow IoT': The growing corporate security blindspot
For years, industry insiders have predicted IoT devices to surge in number. SoftBank's COO, Marcelo Claure, boldly stated in 2018 that there will be 100 IoT devices for every person by 2025. That's nearly a trillion IoT devices in total. What's more, he said that businesses will increase their IoT spend by 96% in the next three years.

The pandemic has seen demand for IoT devices accelerate as homebound consumers buy devices to kit out their home offices. However, this new wave of IoT purchases, from WiFi routers and mesh networks to smart speakers and health-focused wearables, could undermine businesses' security as the 'enterprise' becomes the worker's home itself.

How secure is your IoT device?

The majority of IoT devices purchased for the home are relatively inexpensive, marketed to the average consumer, and often little effort is made to protect them at a hardware or software level. What's more, IT teams have no visibility over what devices employees own or the security measures that employees have (or haven't) taken. With 15% of IoT devices owners still using default passwords, chances are high that most businesses have at least one employee with a vulnerable device.

And when that device resides on the same network being used by the worker for emails, file sharing and accessing protected data, a private vulnerability becomes a business problem. Malicious attackers suddenly have access to a greater array of attack surfaces associated with IoT devices ranging from hardware, networks, APIs and interfaces. techradar.com

IoT Cybersecurity: Webinar Series to Tackle Security Challenges of IoT

The EU Agency for Cybersecurity, Europol and CERT-EU team up to identify the main security risks of IoT and to work towards achieving a more secure IoT ecosystem across Europe

Wednesday, the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA), Europol's European Cybercrime Centre (EC3) and the Computer Emergency Response Team for the EU Institutions, Bodies and Agencies (CERT-EU) will launch the 4th annual IoT Security Conference series to raise awareness on the security challenges facing the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystem across the European Union. The series will span three weeks, with each week exploring a different cybersecurity topic: Operational IoT, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Supply Chain for IoT, respectively. The series will be held in a virtual webinar format, open to public Q&A. europol.eu

Store IoT platforms are set to go mainstream
The real-time store Internet of Things (IoT) platform is moving into the mainstream, climbing out of the "trough of disillusionment" into the "slope of enlightenment," according to Gartner's "2020 Hype Cycle for Retail Technologies" report.

These platforms "monitor, analyze and display store activity through dashboards using a real-time data infrastructure, via signals and alerts from real time data sources that are available within the retail store," according to Gartner.

Few, if any, existing in-store technologies enable retailers to reap the benefits of the "network effect." Within an IoT context, the network effect connects multiple individual initiatives together holistically to benefit from their synergy.

More than this, it enables an automated and rapid response to events within the store or supply chain: adjusts lighting in response to in-store traffic; automatically adjusts a promotion in response to unforecasted demand; proactively deploys staff based on projected need; replenishes product on shelf, just-in-time - the list goes on. retailwire.com

ISC West opens virtual conference with keynote on securing the IoT

Charles Burns opens day 2 of ISC West with Uber's global security insights

Google is creating a special Android security team to find bugs in sensitive apps