McMillion$ on HBO

Everyone Played It. One Man Rigged It.

Watch LP leader Rob Holm, Director, Global Safety & Security - Global Business Services, McDonalds,
in the trailer (at 41-sec. mark) and throughout the series.

Everything You Need to Know About HBO's 'McMillion$'
A six-part documentary series from Executive Producer Mark Wahlberg, McMillion$ chronicles the stranger-than-fiction true story of how $24 million-dollars was stolen from the McDonald’s Monopoly game of the 1990s, the mystery mastermind behind the scam and the intrepid FBI agents on his trail.

For over a decade, McDonald’s fast-food empire awarded prizes in its Monopoly promotional game tie-in, unaware that the biggest winning tickets were being stolen and sold to undeserving winners through a complex web of family and friends who became co-conspirators. An anonymous tip to the FBI in 2001 triggers a far-reaching chain of events that will come to include dogged and unorthodox investigative work, undercover sting operations and dirty dealings by shifty ex-cons with ties to the mafia.

The series unravels the twisted threads of the fast-food fraud through exclusive firsthand accounts and archival footage featuring the FBI agents who brought down the gaming scam, McDonald’s corporate executives who were themselves defrauded, the lawyers who tried the case and the culprits and prizewinners who profited from the complicated scheme, as well as individuals who were often unwittingly duped into being a part of the ruse.

Catch up on all four current episodes here
 

As Coronavirus Spreads, Prepare Infectious-Disease Plans
CDC: Employers in the U.S. should review their infectious-disease management plans. If they don't have these plans, now is the time to create them. The coronavirus hasn't hit the U.S. severely, but if it does reach a pandemic stage here, 'it's better to plan for it than figure it out on the fly.'

Employers not only have to deal with the current outbreak, but they also must prepare for the virus to recur next year. If the coronavirus is not controlled soon, it could materialize stronger and faster next winter, he cautioned.

Companies need emergency teams headed by a coronavirus coordinator and a cross-functional team that includes HR, legal and information technology, said Joseph Deng, an attorney with Baker McKenzie in Los Angeles. shrm.org

At Walgreens, Complaints of Medication Errors Go Missing

Walgreens Cover Up? & CVS Flip Flops
An Industry Held Accountable for Crushing Payrolls

Pharmacy employees at Walgreens told consultants late last year that high levels of stress and “unreasonable” expectations had led them to make mistakes while filling prescriptions and to ignore some safety procedures.

But when the consultants presented their findings at Walgreens’s corporate offices this month, there was no reference to the errors and little mention of other concerns the employees had raised.

That’s because senior leaders at Walgreens had directed the consultants to remove some damaging findings after seeing a draft of their presentation, a review of internal emails, chat logs and two versions of the report shows.

In one instance, Amy Bixler, the director of pharmacy and retail operations at Walgreens, told them to delete a bullet point last month that mentioned how employees “sometimes skirted or completely ignored” proper procedures to meet corporate metrics, according to the chat logs and the draft report.

A slide detailing “errors resulting from stress” was also removed. The consultants, a group from Tata Consultancy Services that was examining the company’s computer system for filling prescriptions, had included the slide among their “high level findings.”

Pharmacists in dozens of states have accused Walgreens, CVS and other major drugstore chains of putting the public at risk of medication errors because of understaffed and chaotic workplaces, The New York Times reported last month.

Read full article here


Wells Fargo Agrees to Pay $3B - Resolves Criminal & Civil Investigations

Sales Practices Involving the Opening of Millions of Fake Accounts

$3 Billion Payment Result of Deferred Prosecution Agreement

Wells Fargo & Company and its subsidiary, Wells Fargo Bank, N.A., have agreed to pay $3 billion to resolve their potential criminal and civil liability stemming from a practice between 2002 and 2016 of pressuring employees to meet unrealistic sales goals that led thousands of employees to provide millions of accounts or products to customers under false pretenses or without consent, often by creating false records or misusing customers’ identities, the Department of Justice announced today.

“This case illustrates a complete failure of leadership at multiple levels within the Bank. Simply put, Wells Fargo traded its hard-earned reputation for short-term profits, and harmed untold numbers of customers along the way,” said U.S. Attorney Nick Hanna for the Central District of California. “We are hopeful that this $3 billion penalty, along with the personnel and structural changes at the Bank, will ensure that such conduct will not reoccur.” justice.gov
 

McKinsey & Company Report: What it takes to win in e-grocery

Grocery Disruption Will Gain Momentum - Quickly

Until relatively recently, the U.S. grocery sector has remained sheltered from the forces of e-commerce for a couple of reasons: Most American shoppers still prefer to choose their own food (especially meat, produce, and other perishable goods), and few grocers have had the financial capacity to invest in the highly efficient, large-scale cold chains required to make home deliveries at a profit. That is changing, according to a recent report from McKinsey & Company.

While online sales accounted for anywhere from 3% to 4% of the U.S. grocery market in 2019, the share could be greater than 10% by 2025, as major retailers—including well-funded entrants from outside the sector—invest in automation and innovative operating models to solve challenges in fulfillment and last-mile delivery. As quality rises and online grocers make more compelling offers, millions of shoppers will get comfortable offloading a task that only about 15 percent say they enjoy, according to McKinsey. So, the question becomes, what does it take to win in e-grocery. retailleader.com mckinsey.com

Digital disruption at the grocery store
Five trends are shaping the transformation of the US grocery industry.
Understanding them is key for grocers to achieve profitable growth in this new competitive environment.
 

‘The modern Goodwill’ - The New Trend Taking the industry by storm

How ThredUp positioned itself as the struggling retailer’s resale partner-in-crime
As the market heats up, all resale platforms are scrambling to find their growth paths. For Thredup, ailing retailers are proving to be a market on which to capitalize.

The 10-year-old company as a peer-to-peer platform for people to buy and sell men’s shirts. Three years later it adopted more of the consignment model, according to Reuters last August, its app saw 19,000 daily active users last July. Now ThredUp has been taking its pitch to some legacy retailers.

In the last six months, ThredUp has announced partnerships with retailers including Macy’s, JC Penney, J.Crew’s Maxwell and now, Gap. Gap is the largest retail partner ThredUp has inked since it announced its intention to work with large stores to help the facilitate secondhand businesses. The Gap partnership the resale model to the stores, with ThredUp distributing its own consignment kits that people can bring home. There, they can fill up the bags with their own clothes, ship them out, and receive store credit at Gap stores. For other retailers, like Macy’s, ThredUp sets up its own pop-up shops in select stores that sells curated secondhand clothes.

There’s a widely-held industry belief that online resale and consignment is going to be the next big revenue generator for retail. For the private companies, it’s difficult to parse who is the biggest. Poshmark reportedly brought in $150 million in 2018; RealReal’s sales exceeded $207 million that same year. ThredUp, conversely, does not reveal its revenue, but says it sold its 100 millionth item in 2019, which came to $7.5 billion in “total processed retail value.”

The entire secondhand industry hit around $28 billion in 2019. That’s projected to nearly double by 2023 to $51 billion. modernretail.com

Editor's Note: Nice potential channel to slip in counterfeits as the RealReal can testify to rumors of that activity recently.

Fossil Cuts unspecified number of workers in its Richardson, TX headquarters
 

Last week's #1 article --

Oxygen show 'Murdered by Morning' profiles 2013 case of Regional LP Manager who murdered a beloved Toys 'R' Us store manager in Hamburg, NY

Bernard Grucza had been authorities' "go-to" guy for help on the investigation, until DNA evidence connected him to the fatal stabbing of Larry Wells

Local journalist Matt Chandler covered crime in Erie County, New York for 20 years, but when it came to the June 2013 murder of Hamburg Toys "R" Us manager Larry Wells, he'd never written about a victim who was so "universally loved," he said.

Wells, 35, was stabbed to death in the wee hours of June 29 in the toy store's office while his co-workers stocked merchandise. The investigation took months as authorities wrestled with the question: Who would want to hurt the well-liked father and co-worker who fostered a family-like atmosphere among the store's employees?

Authorities, who called the case a "true whodunnit," retraced the 109-day investigation on "Murdered by Morning" on Oxygen. oxygen.com 

Watch the full episode on-demand here (cable login required) -or check your local TV listings.

10-18-13: Read the D&D Daily's Special Report on the case here
 

U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency - Joins Facebook
Joining Facebook as part of their outreach collaborative effort to update and engage the community.

facebook.com/CISA. We're asking if you can help us spread the word. Any support you can offer would be very appreciated! We started with a soft launch last week, and will go public in a big way on today, Monday, Feb 24 at RSA.

Please visit facebook.com/CISA. to like or follow us. We’ll be sure to like/follow in return! I’m also attaching some posts and graphics you can use to help drive some traffic our way, or you can just like and share one of the ones we’re posting. We appreciate any support! facebook.com/CISA

California Attorney General Revises California Consumer Privacy Act Proposed Regulations

Accepting Public Comment - Ends Tomorrow at 5 p.m. (PST)

Four months after releasing the initial draft proposed regulations to the California Consumer Privacy Act ("CCPA") of 2018, the California Attorney General ("Attorney General") issued modifications to these regulations in response to public comment.

The Result: The modified regulations propose a number of key changes that impact companies' compliance efforts.

The Attorney General will accept public comment on these modified draft regulations until Tuesday, February 25, 2020, at 5:00 p.m. (PST). Businesses subject to the CCPA should consult the newly revised draft regulations and consider adjusting their ongoing compliance efforts. jdsupra.com

AI Regulation: Has the Time Arrived?

Of the G7 The U.S. Is The Only Holdout - Experts Weigh-IN

Most of the world's leading democracies want to investigate the impact of AI's exponential growth. The US isn't one of them.

Is artificial intelligence getting too smart (and intrusive) for its own good? A growing number of nations have concluded that it's time to take a close look at AI's impact on an array of critical issues, including privacy, security, human rights, crime, and finance.

A proposal for an international oversight panel, the Global Partnership on AI, already has the support of six members of The Group of Seven (G7), an international organization comprised of nations with the largest and most advanced economies. The G7's dominant member, the United States, remains the only holdout, claiming that regulation could hamper the development of AI technologies and hurt US businesses.

The Global Partnership on AI and OECD’s G20 AI principles represent a good first step toward building a worldwide AI regulatory structure, noted Robert L. Foehl, an executive-in-residence for business law and ethics at Ohio University. "However, it also illustrates the challenges in developing over-arching, comprehensive regulation in this area," he added.

The case for regulation - Conflicting views - Regulation risks informationweek.com

CISOs & Boards Are Getting On The Same Page

The Gap Between the C-Suite & CISO's is Narrowing

According to two recent studies, however, each side seems to be gaining some vision. Optiv Security's "The State of the CISO" report and NACD's "Public Company Governance Survey" provide interesting insight into the state of the relationship between CISOs and boards of directors. These survey-based studies show how CISOs and boards view each other and cybersecurity.

A Convergence of Goals

CISOs historically have had trouble communicating with boards due to the difficulty of connecting cybersecurity programs to business value. On the other side of the table, directors are left wondering how cybersecurity maps to enterprise risk and business enablement, so they view CISOs as technical personnel rather than true C-level business executives.

However, Optiv's report, which surveyed 100 CISOs from the US and another 100 from the UK, shows that this gap in perception is narrowing considerably. Some 96% of respondents indicated that senior management and directors comprehend cybersecurity more fully now than five years ago, and 86% said they are getting more funding for their programs because of this improved understanding.

Similarly, NACD's survey of directors found that 79.3% of board members believe their board's understanding of cyber-risk has significantly improved compared with two years ago. Only 8.7% indicated they did not have enough cyber knowledge to provide effective oversight of cyber risks.

Lingering Disconnects

Optiv: 76% believe "CEO tracks" for CISOs will start to emerge.
64% of UK respondents said that executive leadership at their company ranks cybersecurity as their top enterprise concern.

NACD's: Only 28% of responding directors said they prioritize security above all else, even if it slows down business, and 61% said that cybersecurity should not be prioritized above overall business velocity.

Nevertheless, the surveys show that CISOs may be a bit optimistic in their view of how boards prioritize cybersecurity today.

Breach Experience: A Scarlet Letter? Not any longer.

Boards have a general understanding today that breaches are often unavoidable and that it is the response to the breach, rather than the breach itself, that is the true measure of a CISO's competence.

Board/CISO disconnects are still a challenge for both sides. But at least now they seem to know they are both touching an elephant, and that's good news for any company that wants to reduce enterprise risk exposure. darkreading.com

Cisco 2020 CISO Benchmark Report: Average Company Uses 20 Security Technologies
Cisco's sixth annual CISO Benchmark Report has found that the average company uses more than 20 security technologies, which makes managing a multi-vendor environment challenging. The report also found:

• Forty-two percent of respondents are suffering from cybersecurity fatigue, defined as virtually giving up on proactively defending against malicious actors.

• More than 96 percent of fatigue sufferers saying that managing a multi-vendor environment is challenging, complexity being the main causes of burnout.

To combat complexity, security professionals are increasing investments in automation to simplify and speed up response times in their security ecosystems; using cloud security to improve visibility into their networks; and sustaining collaboration between networking, endpoint and security teams. securitymagazine.com

FBI recommends passphrases over password complexity

Phrases Are Harder to Crack

Longer passwords, even consisting of simpler words or constructs, are better than short passwords with special characters.

Last week, in its weekly tech advice column known as Tech Tuesday, the FBI Portland office positioned itself on the side of longer passwords. "Instead of using a short, complex password that is hard to remember, consider using a longer passphrase," the FBI said.

"This involves combining multiple words into a long string of at least 15 characters," it added. "The extra length of a passphrase makes it harder to crack while also making it easier for you to remember."

The idea behind the FBI's advice is that a longer password, even if relying on simpler words and no special characters, will take longer to crack and require more computational resources.

Academic research published in 2015 supports this argument, explaining that "the effect of increasing the length dwarfs the effect of extending the alphabet [adding complexity]."

The FBI's advice echoes a now-infamous XKCD webcomic that made the concept of passphrases-over-passwords widely known among internet users. zdnet.com