Eric Pidgeon, CFI promoted to Vice President - Asset Protection & Safety for Ascena Retail Group, Inc. Eric has worked in loss prevention and security fields for over 19 years. 16 of those have been spent with Ascena Retail Group in various roles such as Director - Global Operations, Safety & Risk Management - Asset Protection, Director of Loss Prevention - Global Supply Chain, Sr. Manager of Loss Prevention & Safety, Sr. Manager of Loss Prevention, Manager of Loss Prevention and Supervisor of Security. He also worked for Gap for just over three years, as Asst. Supervisor Loss Prevention and LP Officer. Eric earned his Bachelors of Arts in Criminology/Sociology from Capital University. Congratulations, Eric!

Darian Griffin named Vice President Asset Protection for Superior Grocers Prior, Darian was the Division Manager-Loss Prevention Kroger (Ralphs) for over three years. He has held various roles in loss prevention and civil service including Managing Director - Operations & Loss Prevention, Director of Operations and Loss Prevention and Regional LP Manager for The Paradies Shops and also as an Investigator for the City of St. Louis! Congratulations, Darian!

Submit Your New Corporate Hires/Promotions or New Position

You Best Vet Your Vendor's Vendor
How much can one company really know about its vendors' vendors? Sometimes it seems supply-chain security is a mirage.

A major healthcare breach happened because hackers merely targeted a vendor of a vendor to a major healthcare provider. Creative! wsj.com

Backdoors Up 44%, Ransomware Up 43% from 2017
Nearly one in three computers was hit with a malware attack this year, and ransomware and backdoors continue to pose a risk.

The Kaspersky Security Bulletin 2018 found malware should be among everyone's top concerns as we head into the new year. Kaspersky Labs handled 346,000 new malicious files each day in the first 10 months of 2018 and detected 21,643,946 unique malicious objects this year.

Backdoor detections made up 3.7% of all new malicious files analyzed by Kaspersky Lab researchers in the first 10 months of 2018, increasing from 2.27 million to 3.26 million year over year. Ransomware (Trojan-ransom) detections made up 3.5%, up from 2.2 million detections to 3.13 million.  darkreading.com

The Convergence Discussion Continues
Retail Security in a World of Digital Touchpoint Complexity
The mindset of security as a first thought and not an afterthought is absolutely crucial to the success of retailers going forward.

With the breadth and depth of the threats, it is best to work with a primary vendor who understands and can provide an integrated security plan for all of your touchpoints so you can stop attacks at the edge, protect your users, control who gets on the network, simplify your administration, find and contain problems quickly when they occur and provide for continuous monitoring.

It is important to note, however, that a complete and integrated security plan is not just about cybersecurity or data security alone but is inclusive of both physical security that protects both you as a retailer, your customers and suppliers.

In fact, let's look at physical security first. First and foremost, there is a need for systems that protect the physical security of your customers. This can include security personnel, security cameras, and proper staffing to physical barriers and access control to keep everyone safe.

Next, there is security and safety for your own employees either at stores, warehouses, and home offices. Once again, this plan includes cameras, access control systems, time and attendance systems and physical protection.

Then there is security for loss prevention that affects both employees and customers. These systems will include CCTV, behavioral analytics, cashier monitoring, checkout cameras, motion and lighting systems and electronic article surveillance along with a human team of LP professionals. Retailers lose between 1-2% of revenue annually due to shrink (either inventory losses or cash theft), and 60% of that comes with employee involvement.

Then there is a security of cash and receipts where smart safes, vaults, and armored personnel carriers play a role.

And finally, there is physical security to protect against false legal claim from consumers and employees, more commonly known as "slip and falls".

All of these areas of security have both physical and systems components. cisco.com

Facial recognition 20 times more accurate with advances in convolutional neural networks, NIST finds
Facial recognition algorithms can identify matches with error rates as low as 0.2 percent given good quality photos, 20 times better than the top 4 percent error rate recorded only five years ago, according to the latest report from NIST's Ongoing Facial Recognition Vendor Test (FRVT).

The NIST Interagency Report (NISTIR) 8238 (PDF) shows that algorithms from 28 developers are now more accurate than the top-performing algorithm observed in late 2013, and that impressive gains made from 2010 to 2013 have been outstripped by even greater improvements from 2013 to the technologies NIST has tested in 2018. The improvements are due the integration of or change to deep convolutional neural networks, NIST says.

"As such, face recognition has undergone an industrial revolution, with algorithms increasingly tolerant of poor quality images. Whether the revolution continues or has moved into a more evolutionary phase, further gains can be expected as machine learning architectures further develop, larger datasets are assembled and benchmarks are further utilized."  biometricupdate.com

Walmart arms store associates with online shopping app
Walmart on Tuesday announced the rollout of a new app for store associates that allows customers to order and pay for items from the retailer's online shopping site while in brick-and-mortar stores. retaildive.com

70% of consumers still want human interaction versus bots

Canadian 1-800-FLOWERS operation discloses four-year breach

Lawyer Responds to Toronto Not Charging First-Time Shoplifters
"Shoplifter demand letters are often exorbitant"
Your article describes a practice of retailers, usually through the services of lawyers and paralegals, sending "demand letters" to alleged shoplifters, requesting that they pay a sum of money to avoid civil proceedings by way of a lawsuit against them.

As a lawyer, I have helped dozens of clients who have received these letters following an incident of shoplifting of a small-value item where police have not laid charges. The letters are in very legalistic language and demand exorbitant amounts that bear absolutely no relationship to the value of the item taken (an often retrieved) or the loss experienced by the store in terms of security and other related costs.

The basic first step in court is proving your losses. At most, the loss would be one hour of a loss-prevention officer's wage and certainly not the amount claimed in these letters. Many of us in the legal community view this practice as, at worst, extortion-like and money-grabbing or, at best, bullying. Not a good reflection on our profession.

My suggestion: Do not pay until you are provided with an accounting. thestar.com

Cargo Thieves in Canada Cash in on Christmas
Reports Raise Alarm Over Multibillion-Dollar Cargo Theft Threats
There's an enterprising group in Canada other than retailers marking their business calendars with holly and other Christmas cheer in anticipation of bottom-line bounty: the fraternity of cargo thieves and smugglers. And, as it does during any holiday, long weekend or other celebratory time of the year when social distractions abound, that fraternity is looking to cash in big time.

Recently released reports from major North American insurance companies and supply chain management auditors have underscored the need for better security and awareness all along goods movement networks, especially when it comes to the transportation of containerized cargo via trucks.

Canadian Cargo Theft Trends: What's New, What's Now, and What's on the Horizon notes that annual cargo theft in Canada now runs into multibillion-dollar losses. That theft, it notes, is often linked to money laundering, terrorist funding and the drug trade. biv.com

Canadian Sears Pensioners Going After Lambert & His ESL Fund
For Unwarranted 2013 $509M Dividend Payment
A court decision has given Sears Canada retirees hope they can recoup some of the millions of dollars missing from the now-defunct retailer's underfunded pension plan. An Ontario Superior Court judge on Monday gave the green light to two lawsuits targeting U.S. billionaire businessman, Eddie Lampert and his hedge fund, ESL Investments, in connection with $509 million in dividends paid to Sears Canada shareholders in 2013. cbc.ca

Only 11 Percent of Canadians Use Self-Checkout
Why Canadians Don't Like the Automated Machines
A new grocery shopping study out of Dalhousie University suggests many Canadians have dabbled in self-checkout, but few have found reason to embrace the technology - which, along with reducing labour costs, is supposed to make shopping more convenient. Out of 1,053 people surveyed in October, two-thirds said they have tried the machines when grocery shopping. However, just 11 per cent of those shoppers report that they use them regularly, while the rest opt to use self-checkout only occasionally. Although the technology has advanced over the years, it remains a source of frustration for many shoppers who have opted not to use the machines on a regular basis because they often have to call for a store attendant anyway. cbc.ca

Pot Is So Hot in Canada That Firms Are Importing Workers
Job Openings Have Tripled Over Past Year; High Turnover Rate
A lack of qualified local labor forced Aphria to dispose of almost 14,000 cannabis plants in the quarter ended Aug. 31 after they weren't harvested in time, costing it nearly C$1 million ($750,000). Since then, the company has doubled the staff at its Aphria One greenhouse thanks in part to Canada's Seasonal Agriculture Worker Program, which has allowed it to hire about 50 temporary workers from the Caribbean and Guatemala with plans to bring in up to 100 more.

Aphria's experience underscores the swelling demand for labor in Canada's five-year-old cannabis sector, where openings have tripled in the past year to 34 out of every 10,000 job postings, according to employment search engine Indeed.com.  bloomberg.com

'Picked a fight with labour':
Unions block mail trucks at B.C. Canada Post depot to protest back-to-work bill
Just after the federal government passed a law this week forcing an end to strikes by Canadian Union of Postal Workers members, the union warned that other unions could act out in response. And, Wednesday, they did just that. CUPW says several major unions in British Columbia set up picket lines at the Pacific Processing Centre in Vancouver. The protesters said they would allow workers into the facility, which is the third-largest postal sorting plant in the country, but trucks with mail would not be allowed in or out. The Crown corporation said it was doing what it could to get mail and parcels sorted in B.C. while the non-CUPW pickets disrupted delivery truck traffic. financialpost.com

Canada Store Openings & Expansions
● Michael Kors Unveils 1st-in-Canada Yorkdale Flagship
● Liquor retailer JAK'S Beer Wine Spirits to open pot stores in Vancouver and across B.C.
● Ivanhoé Cambridge Launching Pop-Up Retail Spaces at 10 Canadian Shopping Centres
● Friendly Stranger Cannabis Culture Shop Plans 50 Store Expansion
● Holiday pop-up store opens in Toronto's Mount Dennis neighbourhood
● Shawn Mendes Is Opening A Pop-Up Shop In Toronto Today For His First-Ever Clothing Line
●  Pacific Football Club opens flagship store in downtown Victoria
●  Nesters Market opens new store in Vancouver


Loblaws cranks up self-checkout with app that scans items while you shop

Amazon files trademark application for Amazon Pay in Canada

What retail workers are dying to say to you, but can't

Sleep Country Canada to buy Endy in $88.7M deal

'Live in Dallas' 2018 at NRF Protect
#3 Most Watched

The NRF ORC Effort

Trends - Value - Get Involved

With 96% of the nation's retailers experiencing Organized Retail Crime, 67% experiencing its continued growth, and the National Retail Security Survey showing shoplifting and ORC as the leading cause of retail shrink for the fourth consecutive year, it's no wonder that Organized Retail Crime continues to be the biggest physical store security risk for retailers in the U.S.

In this roundtable discussion, the two Co-Chairs of the NRF's ORC/Investigators' Network Committee, Jon Shimp (Louis Vuitton) and Gabe Esposito (Verizon), talk about the NRF's ongoing ORC efforts and the challenges and trends they're seeing on a national level. And two of their team members, Robert Ruiz (Louis Vuitton) and Chris Baker (Verizon), share some of the recent developments for ORCA's on a regional level. 

 Episode Sponsored By:


Watch the full 'Live in Dallas' video series here.

Is Your Ecommerce Site Secure for the Holidays?
The holiday season is here again and it is a prime time for cybercriminals to target websites to steal sensitive data. On Cyber Monday alone, online transactions are set to exceed last year's record of $6.59 billion. Manatt is taking this opportunity to alert our clients about recent vulnerabilities impacting ecommerce entities and to provide best practices to mitigate risk.

Cybercriminals target ecommerce entities and syphon personally identifiable information (PII), including payment card data, consumer name, billing address and other sensitive data. They are often able to compromise ecommerce sites, modify the web parameters and inject malicious code to capture PII in real time. The unauthorized disclosure of PII can have negative consequences for both the victim entity and impacted consumers.

The Attack Vectors

Attack vectors are the means by which a cybercriminal can gain access to a device or network in order to deliver a malicious outcome. Examples of attack vectors cybercriminals use to gain access to ecommerce sites include:

Unpatched applications, systems and default configurations: Out-of-the-box applications and operating systems are delivered in a default mode that is not secure. The main reasons to use a default configuration are ease of deployment and administration. But default configurations, such as passwords, built-in user IDs, unnecessary services, unneeded software and insecure protocols can be exploited by cybercriminals, who generally use a scanning tool to identify default configurations and unpatched applications and systems.

Excessive permissions: Systems, applications and users with excessive permissions or lack of access controls can lead to unauthorized access to PII.

Cross-site scripting (CSS): This exploit has the ability to insert malicious programs (scripts) on web pages that can then perform a remote code execution on a user's web browser and subsequently expose sensitive data or deliver malware onto a user's system.

SQL injection: When user-supplied input is not validated or sanitized by the web server application, it can result in disclosure of sensitive information, such as PII, passwords and database content, and may destroy the data or make it unavailable.

Lack of logging and monitoring: A lack of logging and monitoring allows cybercriminals to hide their malicious activity on the business's network. Organizations that do not have robust logging and monitoring processes in place are blind to the details of the attack and to subsequent actions taken by the attackers. Read more manatt.com

DHL uses robots to handle the surge in e-commerce demand at its warehouses
Worldwide delivery service DHL is deploying artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles and product-picking robots at its warehouses in North America to help handle the surge in e-commerce demand.

The U.S. unit of Deutsche Post AG will spend $300 million on its plan to equip 350 of its 430 facilities with new technology that includes autonomous trolleys that shadow human workers and robots that can pick and sort products by themselves, said Scott Sureddin, CEO of DHL Supply Chain North America. digitalcommerce360.com

Black Friday Surpasses Cyber Monday in Global Ecommerce
Black Friday global ecommerce sales growth surpassed Cyber Monday in major markets by more than 34%, according to data by eShopWorld.

The data revealed that in these same markets, global ecommerce sales growth was higher on both Saturday and Sunday (Nov. 24 and 25) than on either Black Friday or Cyber Monday.

The five countries that generated the highest year-over-year revenue growth over Black Friday through Cyber Monday included The United Kingdom (up 71%), Canada (up 23%), Australia (up 114%), Germany (up 17%) and The Russian Federation (up 137%). multichannelmerchant.com

Abercrombie & Fitch expects to sell $1 billion online this year

Toys and hobbies e-retailers' web sales growth grew 21.5% in 2017

Mobile accounts for nearly half of all orders placed over the Cyber 5 weekend

Signifyd to expand its ecommerce fraud protection business in Europe

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Featured Job Spotlights

	Divisional Loss Prevention Director Florida Provides strategic loss prevention management for a division of 2,000+ stores with sales volumes totaling +/- $4B. Maximizes profits by developing and executing programs to reduce and prevent the loss of company inventory/assets and managing Regional Loss Prevention Managers within an assigned geographical area...
	Asset Protection Director Western United States The Director of Asset Protection and Occupational Safety will lead WFM in shrink reduction, environmental health and occupational safety efforts. The position will proactively seek to bring economic value to the company, promoting profitable sales and world class customer service while ensuring a safe place to work and shop...
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	Regional Safety and LP Specialist Miami, FL The Safety and Loss Prevention Specialist is a subject matter expert responsible for partnering with both our corporate stores and franchise store operations to improve the safety and training processes. This includes reducing motor vehicle accidents, reducing work-related injuries, and ensuring OSHA / DOT compliance through the implementation of corporate or franchisee plans in accordance with local, state, and federal rules and regulations...
	Loss Prevention Investigator Wawa, PA The Loss Prevention Investigator is responsible for utilizing proper investigative techniques and act as the primary liaison with field operations management. Conducts investigations into cash losses, deposit shortages, associate theft, overall shrinkage, and other matters...

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