10/10/19

LP, AP & IT Security's #1 News Source

2019 GLPS - Group LP Selfies
Your Team - Your Pride - Our Industry
Building Industry Pride - One Team Selfie at a Time
 

From left to right: Dan Helmick - RAPM, Brad Reeves - Sr. Mgr of Asset Protection, Eric Koopmeiners - RAPM, Gregg Smith - Sr. Director of Asset Protection and Inventory Control, Matt Dorgan - Manager of Investigations, Ryan Torres - RAPM, and Gerald DeClemente - RAPM

Thanks to Gregg Smith, Sr. Director - Asset Protection & Inventory Control at Five Below, for submitting this GLPS
 

One Stop Health and Beauty Shop on 201 Station Road in Richland Township bought the stolen items and resold them for profit within the stand and on eBay, the Quakertown Police Department said in a news release. The shop bought the stolen products from many drug-addicted customers who would commit retail thefts at area retail stores, police said. Michael Gill would specifically provide lists to those committing the thefts indicating which items he needed for the stand, police said.

Michael Gill, one of the shop's operators, reported making between $2,500 and $5,000 each weekend in sales, including through the sale of stolen items, and buying about $1,000 in products from private sellers each week, the Bucks County district attorney's office said, citing a criminal complaint. Read more

For further information on PROACT, email inquiries to PROACT@eBay.com.

Appriss Retail Named One of the Best Vendors and Best Newcomers at the 2019 UK Fraud Awards

Appriss Retail, the industry leader in retail performance improvement solutions, today announced that the company was "Highly Commended" in both the Vendor of the Year and Best Newcomer categories by Retail Knowledge during its 2019 Fraud Awards. The awards were distributed at the annual gala dinner on October 4 in Leicester, UK. The accolades highlight Appriss Retail's increasing momentum as it expands its presence among retailers around the globe.

"We are honored to receive this recognition for our efforts helping retailers based in the United Kingdom provide outstanding customer service while curtailing employee and consumer fraud in brick-and-mortar stores and online. These recognitions are particularly meaningful coming so close on the heels of our Australian success," said Tom Rittman, vice-president of marketing, Appriss Retail.

Appriss Retail's expansion has flourished from its roots in the US and UK. Its solutions are used in 45 countries and on six continents, including many well-known retailers in the UK and EU. The Appriss Retail Performance Platform of solutions incorporates analytics and artificial intelligence to create real-time automated decisions, post-transaction insights, and recommended user actions. These are delivered to its retailer clients via several well-known product brands including Verify® return authorization and Secure exception based reporting.

About Appriss Retail
Appriss Retail, a division of Appriss Inc., provides artificial intelligence-based solutions to help retailers protect margin, unlock sales, and cut shrink. With more than 20 years of retail data science expertise, the company's Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform generates advanced analytical insights and real-time decisions that drive action throughout the organization, including operations, finance, marketing, and loss prevention. Its performance-improvement solutions yield measurable results with significant return on investment among retail store, ecommerce, and inventory functions. Appriss Retail serves a global base of leading specialty, apparel, department store, hard goods, big box, grocery, pharmacy, and hospitality businesses in more than 150,000 locations (brick and mortar and online) in 45 countries across six continents. For more information about Appriss Retail, visit https://apprissretail.com.

RH-ISAC Retail Cyber Intelligence Summit - Award Recap
Another Round of Applause for our Peer Choice Award Winners!
Target's Cyber Team Is #1 For Third Year Running

2019 has been another great year for RH-ISAC! During the Retail Cyber Intelligence Summit in Denver, CO, RH-ISAC members came together to share ideas, collaborate, talk threat intelligence, and celebrate the year. RH-ISAC hosted an annual member meeting during the Member Gala as a way to honor our community, congratulate them on all that they do and to announce our Peer Choice Award winners!

Cybersecurity Team of the Year: Target

This is Target's third time in a row winning this award. The Target team provides important information to the community and continues to lead the RH-ISAC in not only intel shared, but valuable intel AND analysis. Other RH-ISAC member teams have stepped up their game due to the expertise shared out of the Target team. Target understands how to share information as a means to advance the collective defense of the retail and hospitality industry and they are true ambassadors to our motto, "Protect as One."

Rich Agostino, Target's Chief Information Security Officer said of his team, "At Target, we think industries should come together to help advance capabilities in cybersecurity and we take this collaborative spirit to heart. I'm proud of the team's efforts to consistently share intelligence with our peers, all while investing in developing their own technical skills and lending their time to help others enhance their programs."

CISO of the Year: Benjamin Vaughn, CISO, Hyatt

Cybersecurity Practitioner of the Year: Kyle Davis, Principal Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst, Target

Associate Company of the Year: Flashpoint

Click here to read more about RH-ISAC's award winners.

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"Cyber Hunt" Legislation Passes U.S. Senate: Any Implications for Business?
In a legislative environment charitably described as challenging, the fact that the Senate recently passed cybersecurity legislation by unanimous consent is noteworthy and highlights the bipartisan nature of this issue. The DHS Cyber Hunt and Incident Response Act (H.R. 1158) responds to the recent spate of ransomware attacks against government agencies and private sector organizations¹. It would require the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to form "cyber hunt" and incident response teams that could be called upon to assist federal, state, and local entities to respond to a ransomware or other type of cybersecurity incident or to identify vulnerabilities in their systems that may increase the likelihood and success of a future attack. While continued government attention to the availability of cybersecurity capabilities should be welcomed by the private sector, the extent to which businesses will directly benefit from this legislation is unclear given its focus. lexology.com

Digital transformation requires an aggressive approach to security
Organizations agree, building security into digital transformation initiatives is a priority, yet the recommended path to progress is unclear, according to a survey conducted by ZeroNorth.

Companies of all sizes and in all industries are experiencing the pains of digital transformation, with 79% of survey respondents indicating their organization already has related initiatives underway.

All participants indicate the importance of digital transformation to the future of their organization, even those who have not yet embarked on a program. Further, identifying bugs, flaws and vulnerabilities throughout the software development lifecycle (SDLC) is considered "extremely" (58%) or "very" (42%) important to all participants. helpnetsecurity.com

Successful approach to digital transformation

Security Analysts & SOCs Overwhelmed By Alert Overload
The typical security team today continues to struggle with the same frustrating and potentially dangerous problem: a sea of security tools that churn out waves of alerts and siloed data that often requires manual correlation - or get altogether dismissed by overburdened security analysts.

"If it takes a SOC analyst more than three clicks to make a decision, he/she is going to move on. They have thousands of other alerts" waiting for them, says Jill Cagliostro, product strategist for security firm Anomali.

That frightening - but understandable - conundrum for security analysts who under so much pressure that they literally pitch some alerts that take too much time to investigate underscores the perils and real possibility of missing that one needle in a haystack in security operations centers (SOCs) today. At the root of the alert overload, of course, is a mix of multiple security tools from various vendors - most of which don't work together and security analysts don't even have time to fully master.

Organizations on average run some 25 to 49 security tools from up to 10 different vendors, according to the Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG), and 40% of organizations are so taxed that they can't act upon at least a quarter of their security alerts. And in many cases, that's leading to organizations literally shutting off some alerting functions, SOC vendor CriticalStart found. darkreading.com

USB Drive Security Still Lags
While USB drives are frequent pieces of business hardware, a new report says that one-third of US businesses have no policy governing their use.

Though nearly nine out of 10 US businesses use USB drives in their IT operation, less than half use any monitoring or encryption to protect the data on those highly portable devices. And the trends are getting worse: Only 47% have a policy for lost or stolen drives compared with 50% with such policies in 2017. darkreading.com

FBI: Cybercriminals Are Bypassing Multifactor Authentication
Threat Actors Using Social Engineering, Other Technical Techniques to Circumvent MFA Protections
In a Private Industry Notification issued in September, which Forbes first reported, the FBI notes that cybercriminals and other threat actors are now taking advantage of inherent flaws in multifactor authentication to bypass the security filters in order to take over accounts or steal additional credentials.

In one form of multifactor authentication, a user enters credentials into a system or device and then receives a one-time password to help verify their identity. Now, however, it appears that threat actors and cybercriminals have found new ways to circumvent this type of protection, the FBI warning notes. govinfosecurity.com

Winning the security fight: Tips for organizations and CISOs

Top 5 LPNN Videos of 2018
#2 Most Watched

Technology: Redefining Loss Prevention

The Future of LP/AP

Mike Lamb, VP of AP, Kroger
Mark Stinde, VP of AP, 7-Eleven
Kevin Colman, Group VP of AP, Macy's

With retail rolling out a multitude of new technologies faster than ever before, how are the core LP/AP executives in the store and at corporate being impacted? How involved are we in these rollouts on the front end? And on the back end, does it change the essence of LP's training, awareness, and investigative abilities?

With e-commerce fraud growing and a number of LP/AP executives now managing those processes, we now have a slight, invisible merging of IT Security and Loss Prevention that is being talked about. How far will this evolve?

In this roundtable discussion, three industry leaders share their perspectives on how technology is impacting LP's role now and in the future.

Episode Sponsored By

See our 'Live in Dallas' Top 5 and 'Live in NYC' Top 5 videos here.

Battling Account Takeover Risks Without Compromising User Experience
Account takeover and fraud schemes are costing consumers, banks, retail organizations, healthcare and other online businesses billions of dollars each year. What's more, the cost of these attacks is on the rise-according to Riskified, losses from account takeover rose 122 percent from 2016 to 2017 and increased by 164 percent the following year.

Two-factor authentication (2FA) is being championed as a means of addressing account takeover schemes and other security vulnerabilities, as it forces people to use something other than a password to confirm they are who they say they are. But the reality is that users perceive 2FA to be a burdensome technology that detracts from their experience and, when given the choice, many prefer not to implement it. Case in point, according to Google, fewer than 10 percent of its users have signed up for 2FA to protect their Google accounts.

As digital transformation efforts continue and customers demand an ever-increasing high-quality, seamless online experience, we can only expect more users to grow more frustrated with the friction introduced by 2FA. As such, in its current form, it's clearly not the right approach for ensuring security while also keeping the quality of the customer experience at the forefront.

Our modern, digital world demands a modern approach that ensures the security of digital accounts while simultaneously prioritizing the customer experience. In addition to the security benefits, a user-centric security approach also helps IT teams get buy-in from other lines of business. Once marketing and sales have an assurance that customer friction will be eliminated unless critically necessary, these departments are much less likely to fight against the introduction of new account protection technologies. securitymagazine.com

E-Commerce Driving Bigger Demand for Smaller Warehouses, CBRE Says
Rents for U.S. warehouses of between 70,000 and 120,000 square feet rose by more than 33.7% over the past five years, to an average of $6.67 per square foot, according to real-estate consulting firm CBRE Group Inc. Availability for such spaces plunged to 7.4% from 11.3% during that same period, the biggest drop of any segment in the broader warehouse market.

By contrast the cost to lease bigger industrial spaces of more than 250,000 square feet-including the big-box warehouses that have traditionally anchored retail and industrial distribution networks-grew by 15.6%, CBRE found. Overall industrial rents rose by 23.9% between the second quarter of 2014 and the second quarter of 2019. wsj.com

Up to 20,000 ecommerce websites at risk of Magecart attacks following Volusion server compromise

FBI Crackdown on Skimming Gangs Nationwide

Biggest International Organized Gang Busted in History
Nationwide ATM Skimming Gangs Hit U.S. for $20M - All Coordinated
-18 Members Of International Fraud & Money Laundering Conspiracy
-ATM Skimming Gangs
-Charged In Manhattan Federal Court
Defendants directed, or worked in, teams that the Skimming Organization deployed across the United States in order to carry out ATM skimming attacks, casing ideal locations for the attacks, installing skimming devices on ATMs, removing those devices, and cashing out large numbers of fraudulent debit cards manufactured as a result of the skimming operations. Other defendants assisted in receiving packages containing skimming devices or component parts that were shipped from other parts of the U.S. and from abroad. Other defendants assisted in engineering the skimming devices that the Skimming Organization used. Still other defendants laundered the proceeds of the skimming attacks through bank accounts, properties, businesses, and the transportation of bulk cash.

The defendants carried out hundreds of ATM skimming operations across the U.S., including in New York and at least 17 other states. The scheme defrauded financial institutions and individual victims of more than $20 million. justice.gov

Seven from Miami, Fla., Indicted in Connection with Gas Station Skimming Scheme

Romanian nationals unlawfully in U.S. charged in $1M ATM skimming & cash-out scheme
 

Citrus Heights, CA: Three Suspects Fill Trash Bags At Victoria's Secret And Run Out Police say three suspects stole thousands of dollars in merchandise from the Victoria's Secret in Citrus Heights Wednesday afternoon. A spokesperson for Citrus Heights police said the suspects came through filling trash bags before driving away from the mall in a white Hyundai with paper plates. No one was hurt in this burglary. Police said this is the second time in a week the store was burglarized in a similar way. The previous case also has three suspects. Investigators are working to see if the suspects are the same in both cases. sacramento.cbslocal.com

Gwinnett County, GA: Couple accused of stealing from Belk store, using Taser on security guard Donya Butler and her boyfriend Trenton Collins, both 18, were arrested Monday after the incident at the Scenic Highway shopping center, Police said the store's loss prevention officer witnessed the duo pocket a package of men's underwear and a jacket. When they were confronted as they tried to leave the store, Butler allegedly pulled out a pink Taser and zapped the employee in the back. The confrontation then turns physical as the suspects try to leave. ajc.com

Lubbock, TX: Burglar arrested with thousand in merchandise from Anderson Brothers Jewelers; suspect in body armor A 31-year-old man was arrested early Wednesday morning after he was reportedly caught leaving the parking lot of a jewelry store with thousands of dollars' worth of stolen rings and jewelry. James Casias was arrested on charges of burglary of a building, being a felon in possession of body armor, possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia. Lubbock police responded about 4 a.m. to a burglary alarm at Anderson Brothers Jewelers where they found Casias leaving the store's parking lot. Officers stopped Casias, who exited his vehicle in a bullet proof vest. Police saw contraband and jewelry in the vehicle.  lubbockonline.com

Rensselaer County, NY: Man stole $5k worth of cigarettes from Walmart
Rensselaer County man has been charged with two felonies for allegedly stealing $5,000 worth of cigarettes from the Walmart store in Wilton. Anthony T. Moore, 41, of Renssalaer, allegedly stole 500 packs of smokes from the Route 50 supercenter after he had previously been banned from the property, State Police said. poststar.com

University Heights, OH: Couple steals nearly $3,000 worth of jewelry from Macy's
 

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NEW TODAY	Loss Prevention Operations Specialist Tucscon, AZ The Loss Prevention Specialist will oversee the Burglar/Fire Alarm and overall Physical Security function for stores including CCTV for all new stores, renovations, acquisitions, closing, existing stores and warehouses. In addition, this position supports the security/property control component for the Corporate Headquarters main campus...
NEW TODAY	Region Asset Protection Manager Jacksonville, FL Responsible for managing asset protection programs designed to minimize shrink, associate and customer liability accidents, bad check and cash loss, and safety incidents for stores within assigned region. This position will develop the framework for the groups' response to critical incidents, investigative needs, safety concerns and regulatory agency visits...
NEW TODAY	Region Asset Protection Manager Charleston, SC Responsible for managing asset protection programs designed to minimize shrink, associate and customer liability accidents, bad check and cash loss, and safety incidents for stores within assigned region. This position will develop the framework for the groups' response to critical incidents, investigative needs, safety concerns and regulatory agency visits...
	Brand Protection Specialist New York, NY The role of the Brand Protection Specialist is to deter shrinkage, and to assist in educating the store teams regarding the prevention / deterrence of both internal and external theft and fraud, while serving as an Ambassador to the brand and the department...
	Organized Retail Crime Manager Houston, TX Oversee organized retail crime (ORC) interactions within a defined region, execute against ORC initiatives and respond to cases involving executive protection, critical incidents, threat analysis, and threat assessments. Identify, exploit and lead investigations related to ORC and other assigned investigations...
	Manager of Loss Prevention & Security Wawa, PA The Manager of Loss Prevention and Security serves as the subject matter expert in the area of Loss Prevention and Physical Security for the Company with focus on developing and driving solutions that will create an optimum associate and customer experience in a safe and secure environment...

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