'The Current Pharmacy Model is Not Sustainable'
Why your drug store is closing

CVS is closing 900 stores. Rite-Aid is closing 500. Walgreens announced Tuesday it plans to close 1,200 stores, meaning 1 in 7 will disappear. What is going on with America's drug stores?

Walgreens and other chains overexpanded during the 1990s and 2000s to drive out competitors and draw more customers. They are now shutting down because of shifting consumer habits, competition and changes in the pharmacy industry.

Around 25% of Walgreens' stores aren't profitable, CEO Tim Wentworth said in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in June, and the chain will look to close stores that are right by one another or struggling to hold down theft.

Walgreens and other retailers say they have been hit by shoplifting since the pandemic, and resorted to locking up items or closing high-theft stores. But shoplifting alone doesn't explain Walgreens' problems, and the company subsequently admitted last year it "cried too much" over the impact of the would-be scourge. Meanwhile, increased competition and failed growth strategies, like acquiring primary care providers, continue to have reverberating impacts on drug stores.

"We are at a point where the current pharmacy model is not sustainable," Wentworth said in June.

CVS, the largest US chain, closed 244 stores between 2018 and 2020. In 2021, it announced plans to close an additional 900 stores. Earlier this month, CVS said it planned to cut about 2,900 jobs corporate jobs.

And Rite Aid filed for bankruptcy last year, closing up to 500 stores. cnn.com


Consumer Outlook Healthy & Supply Chain Stable
Holiday shopping season: An early look at how retail stores and e-commerce are getting ready for the rush

The consumer outlook is similar to last year & the supply chain is looking more stable.

The consumer continues to look healthy and the supply chain has regained stability as the holiday shopping season begins.

That's according to DHL Supply Chain's new CEO for North America, Patrick Kelleher, who told CNBC the shipping company is seeing more promotional items make their way out of warehouses and to retailers, but not in a signal of increased consumer weakness compared to the prior year.

"Across the board, we are seeing volumes very similar to what we've seen in past years, especially last year," said Kelleher.

Freight is considered a forward-looking indicator of a retailer's expectations of the consumer, and Kelleher said more promotional items have left or are leaving warehouses and filling store shelves, but he added, "I think it's very consistent from what we've seen in past years in terms of the combination of retailers' engagement of promotional strategies around particular product categories, sell-through of their core offerings. We don't see a big shift there."  cnbc.com


Election Day's Business Impact
Companies are talking about how Election Day will impact them, from slowing beer sales to people flying less
The US presidential election is just under three weeks away, and companies from Citigroup to Delta are flagging how it might affect their businesses. CEOs and other business leaders have weighed in on Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, and the effects that each candidate would have on their companies if elected.

But they're also pointing to the effects that Election Day, November 5, will likely have on their businesses - everything from drinkers buying less to companies issuing debt sooner. Constellation Brands, which makes Corona and Modelo, often sees beer consumption slow down around contentious US elections, CEO William Newlands said during an earnings call on October 3.

Delta Air Lines expects a 1 percentage point hit to its revenue this quarter as people avoid traveling in the two weeks around Election Day, Glen Hauenstein, Delta's president, said on Thursday. Delta saw something similar happen after the 2016 election, Hauenstein said at the time.

Differences between Harris and Trump on taxes, tariffs, and other issues could lead to very different outcomes for Wall Street depending on who wins the presidential election. businessinsider.com


400 New Stores
Ulta Beauty plans to open 400 new stores, hit 50M loyalty members
Ulta Beauty's profitability strategy includes aggressive growth in store count and loyalty program size.

At its 2024 Investor Day event, the nation's largest beauty retailer, which recently reported its first quarterly revenue and earnings per share misses since 2020, unveiled a strategy to drive profitable growth and market share in beauty and wellness that includes accelerating new store openings to reach a total of more than 1,800 over the long-term. Ulta currently has more than 1,400 locations mnationwide.

The retailer maintained its guidance for fiscal year 2024 and expects a total of 60 to 65 net new stores and 40-45 remodel and relocation projects.  chainstoreage.com


How Should Brands Respond to Shrinkflation Charges?

Many Americans Expect To Miss Credit Card Payments in the Coming Months
 

Ransomware Attacks Surge Against Microsoft Customers
Microsoft reveals ransomware attacks against its customers nearly tripled last year

Despite the increase, the percentage of cyberattacks reaching the encryption stage continued to decline, according to a Microsoft study.

Microsoft customers confronted nearly triple the amount of ransomware attacks during the one-year period ending in June, the company said Tuesday in its Digital Defense Report.

Microsoft observed a 275% year-over-year increase in human-operated ransomware attacks between July 2023 and June 2024. This increase in ransomware attacks was partially offset by a sustained decrease in cyberattacks reaching the encryption stage, the report found.

"The percentage of attacks reaching actual encryption phase has decreased over the past two years by threefold," Microsoft said in the report. "Automatic attack disruption contributed to this positive trend in decreasing successful attacks."

While data and systems encryption is a traditional defining characteristic of ransomware attacks, many financially motivated attackers skip the step of encryption and steal sensitive data for extortion.

One of the most consequential ransomware attack sprees this year to date did not involve encryption. In April, a ransomware group compromised the Snowflake environments of more than 100 companies in a wave of attacks, resulting in widespread data theft, exposure and extortion, according to Mandiant. cybersecuritydive.com


'The Evolution of Attack Surface Management'
CISOs' strategies for managing a growing attack surface
In this Help Net Security interview, Rickard Carlsson, CEO at Detectify, discusses the evolution of attack surface management in the context of remote work and digital transformation.

Carlsson highlights the challenges CISOs face today, including maintaining visibility and managing compliance in an expanding attack surface, all while dealing with limited resources and rising business demands.

With the shift towards remote work and digital transformation, how has the traditional concept of attack surface management evolved? What are the biggest challenges CISOs face today compared to a few years ago?

Organizations should start forgetting about the old perimeter-based approach to security. There is virtually no difference between office work and remote work anymore. There is no inside and outside, just outside. What is to be secured now is a growing, dynamic, and sprawling mess of endpoints, cloud services, and third-party applications that form an external attack surface.

It is no wonder that CISOs face many challenges today related to attack surface expansion. They are constantly battling to maintain visibility, keep up with modern (and quickly evolving) tech changes, new attack vectors, and stay on top of a growing compliance and regulatory wave (like NIS2, DORA, or the Cyber Resilience Act in Europe). Plus, they need to do it all with limited resources and increasing pressure to bring business value. helpnetsecurity.com


Defenders must adapt to shrinking exploitation timelines
A new report from Mandiant reveals that the average time-to-exploit vulnerabilities before or after a patch is released has plunged to just five days in 2023, down from 32 days in 2021 in 2022.

One reason for this is the fact that, in 2023, exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities (unknown to vendors, with no patches available) considerably outpaced the exploitation of n-day flaws (publicly disclosed bugs, with patches available). Another is that n-day exploitation continues to occur more quickly after disclosure.

Mandiant's analysts have analyzed 138 vulnerabilities disclosed in 2023 that have been first exploited either as zero-days (97, or 70%) or as n-days (41, or 30%).

Zero-days are being increasingly favored by attackers, it seems, and this might be due to improved detection of zero-days or a higher success rate in exploiting them. helpnetsecurity.com


CISA adds SolarWinds flaw to exploited vulnerabilities catalog