A Story of a Prolific Offender Traveling Through the Zones of Influence
The Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) has done a great job of highlighting research focused on the different Zones of Influence that offenders travel through when undertaking criminal activity. Zone 5 specifically is extremely large and a zone that we AP/LP professionals have less influence on due to external factors.

Prolific offenders know they enjoy anonymity in Zone 5 while they move from store to store or from retailer to retailer. We do our best to share information with each other, from ORCA groups to Whatsapp, Yammer, texts, and email BOLOs. However, these are still very manual processes that happen retroactively and for the most part are siloed by communities and geographical areas. It is going to take a new approach to address the crime challenges we face, read more on how we can leverage a connected industry to reset the risk/reward trade-off. Read More Here

NYC's Mayor De Blasio's "Take Back the Block" Program
De Blasio unveils plan to combat NYC’s surge in gun violence
After days of delay, Mayor Bill de Blasio laid out his plan to combat gun violence in New York City — by “taking back the block” with some added cops but a heavy reliance on community members on the streets

“We will take back our streets in Harlem and all over our city but we’re going to do it from the ground up,” de Blasio said. “We are going to break the cycle of violence.”

Now starting tonight, you’re going to see a combination of things happening ... increased NYPD presence at hotspots at key locations more patrol officers on foot in vehicles, but also more community presence because that is the key to this community leaders committee organizations walking with police officers showing common cause,” the mayor added.

De Blasio announced his “Take Back the Block” initiative Friday morning at a press conference after days of promising a plan to combat the gun violence following a bloody holiday weekend — and without anyone from the NYPD joining the briefing.

The plan appears to lean heavily on increasing the neighborhood watch, adding community members as “violence interrupters,” opening up churches and putting clergy and faith-based outreach programs on the streets — as well as boosting police presence on more than 20 streets and in city housing complexes.

De Blasio said the initiative is also aimed at engaging youth, with pop-up basketball events and a youth town hall.

The NYPD did not immediately respond for comment as to how many patrols would be added. nypost.com

The Weekend is Upon Us - What Will Happen?
Hopefully Not a Repeat of the July 4th Long Weekend
We have a couple of factors not present last weekend that may bode well for a more peaceful weekend.

1. Tropical Storm Fay picks up speed, strength en route to NYC area - The Northeast should be quiet at least through Saturday night - except for those dodging the wind and rain.  Tropical Storm Fay picked up some speed and strength as it moved closer to land Friday — and is expected to dump 2 to 4 inches of rain as it passes through the tri-state area, forecasters said. A tropical storm warning is in effect from Cape May, New Jersey, to Watch Hill, Rhode Island. The warning area includes Long Island and the Long Island Sound.  nypost.com

2. 'Heat dome' weather system to bake America with temperatures beyond 90F for weeks. A blistering "heat dome" will blanket large swathes of the US this weekend with temperatures above 90F degrees, and up to 121F, that will last for weeks as experts warn of increased danger in heat-related illness and deaths. The severe heat has a tendency to reduce activity.

3. Police departments across the country will be more prepared for the extreme gun violence given this past weekend's experience.

4. Atlanta has the 1,000 National Guard troops guarding a number of facilities still. Which works as a deterrent factor.

5. And after last weekend and the Administration's conversations with the Governors this week it would be safe to assume a number of them have resources ready and easily accessible.

Just some thoughts. -Gus Downing

Retailers Increase Risk From Armed ORC Suspects
As COVID-19 lockdowns ease in some cities, violent crime returns to the streets
A surge of gun violence is plaguing several major cities in the U.S., adding to the woes of a nation grappling with the coronavirus pandemic and civil unrest.

City and police officials across the country began the week by addressing the violence. “We cannot allow this to be normalized,” Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown told reporters Monday, lamenting a spate of shootings over the Fourth of July weekend that included the killing of a 7-year-old girl.

Experts who spoke to Yahoo News tied the surge to the country’s myriad challenges: the stress of the COVID-19 pandemic, economic uncertainty and increasingly strained relations between police and communities that were already weakened by decades of distrust.

Stay-at-home orders to control the pandemic confined people inside for much of April and May. And while there is evidence this held down crime in some cities, Rand Corp. researcher John Hollywood told Yahoo News that the lockdown caused psychological stress to build up. yahoo.com

Editor's Note: Couple this with a huge spike in gun store burglaries over the last year nationwide according to numerous reports we've documented here on the Daily from ATF and the FBI, and you have more illegal guns on the market and in circulation then ever. Opening the door to a large number of unregistered and untraceable guns being used in shootings, more felon's being able to buy illegal guns, and more guns being used in drug crimes and transactions and simply more guns being carried by criminals. Thus increasing the risk and frequency of usage.

The risk for retailers is the increased exposure from drug dependent ORC suspects carrying guns.
Just some thoughts -Gus Downing

In Case You Missed It Hundreds of July 4th Weekend Shootings Across the U.S. 233 Shootings, 70 Killed, 276 Injured in 30 Cities Studied In case you missed it, see the full list compiled by The Daily here.

Making the Case for CRO's
How Chief Risk Officers Can Add Value in a Crisis
Risk management is proactive, peering around corners to identify uncertainties that may impact the organization’s ability to achieve its objectives. Crisis management is reactive, marshaling resources to respond to a risk that has already manifested and requires immediate attention. Both require senior leadership engagement to be effective, but the roles and methods can be very different, and the chief risk officer (CRO) may be the best person to address both.

If CROs are typically focused on addressing how current exposures might impact future results, what is their role in the middle of a crisis, when a significant risk has already manifested? Many CROs have had to manage crises, but the current pandemic is pushing everyone into uncharted territory. The challenge (and opportunity) for CROs is to pursue actions that add value for their enterprises, both in the moment and for the long-term.

Immediate Crisis Management

CROs bring a different lens to crisis management, advising leadership on the risk-based implications of the rapid decisions that must be made. CROs can help anticipate unintended consequences, proactively plan for them, and maintain a record for the future—all without distracting from the immediate demands on management for timely action in the midst of a crisis. rmmagazine.com

COVID's Impact on Physical Security - Keeping People Healthy
The physical security impacts of reopening businesses
As a result of the pandemic, we are now tasked with redefining what physical security is, and the efforts that any type of organization and industry must make to ensure employees and consumers can avoid potential health threats and community spread.

Just four short months ago, our idea of physical security was walking through the metal detectors at the airport or at large concert or sporting events.

Now, just a few short months later, physical security is defined by social distancing and wearing masks. In this Covid-19 world, we’re not worried about managing large crowds to keep them safe from potential harm, but rather, the focus is on maintaining smaller crowd sizes and keeping people healthy.

The physical security world is morphing to now include ensuring compliance in a post-pandemic world. For CSOs, CIOs and CISOs, your job is being transformed to a new way of keeping employees safe. There are going to be all sorts of new guidelines designed to ensure everyone is complying with safety measures. Expect there to be the same kind of compliance regulations developed for physical security as exists today for cybersecurity and data privacy. It’s a whole new world to get used to, especially for those designated to provide for our physical security. securitymagazine.com

Public Safety Utilizing Social Media for National Emergencies
NIST to use Twitter API data to boost public emergency response
In an effort to enable public safety-focused entities to tap social media analytics in emergency response, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)’s Text Retrieval Conference, or TREC, Incident Streams project intends to gain access to Twitter’s Enterprise-Level application programming interface, or API.

As part of the Public Safety Communications Research (PSCR) program, NIST began TREC Incident Streams project to support research into social media analytics during emergencies and natural disasters. "Increasingly, people expect emergency responders to monitor social media, but in practice, public safety organizations do not have the technology or expertise to do so. The TREC Incident Streams project identifies tweets sent during emergencies and annotates them for priority and according to an emergency response ontology. Read the full public notice.


Distressed Consumers Trends in the Post COVID-19 Recovery

By Tony D'Onofrio, Global Retail Influencer

Consumer spending accounts for roughly 70% of USA economic growth in the United States. In a short amount of time, COVID-19 has become a brutal disruptor of traditional buying patterns.

Research indicates that it takes 66 days or roughly two months for a behavior to become an automatic habit. That is roughly how long most countries were in various lockdown phases.

As we reopen stores, we are in unchartered shopping territory. This article summarizes the latest shopping data, key insights on the digital shifts underway, and recommendations for a stronger retail industry recovery.

"Retailers need to stop expecting business to return to “normal.” There’s no going back to how it was anytime soon. Even before the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis, brick-and-mortar retailers had been fighting a fierce battle against Amazon and other e-commerce players. Those challenges have now accelerated at staggering speed."

The Toilet Paper Crisis in NOT Over - The Consumer Shift to Digital - Back to "Normal" is a Fantasy

Read more here: tonydonofrio.com


Coresight Research
Weekly 28: US Store Openings & Closures
5,354 2020 YTD Closures
3,351 2020 YTD Openings
*Coresight’s experienced analysts curate a dynamic list of
approx. 400 retailers to represent the overall US retail market.


Quarterly Results
Walgreens Q3 Retail Pharmacy U.S. comp's up 3%, total revenue up 0.1%
Bed Bath & Beyond Q1 net sales down 49%

Retail & Hospitality 2020 Threat Trend Report
RH-ISAC and Accenture recently published the Retail & Hospitality 2020 Threat Trend Report. The report shares insights into the state of cyberthreats to the retail and hospitality sectors throughout 2019, and also looks ahead as companies deal with cyber threats during COVID-19. RH-ISAC and Accenture gathered cybersecurity insights for our RH-ISAC members using 2019 data provided including indicators of compromise (IoCs) and requests for intelligence (RFIs), as well as threat intelligence gathered by Accenture's iDefense threat intelligence team.

With a focus on current and emerging threat trends, this report can be leveraged across various levels of a firm's cybersecurity leadership to inform business strategy, adversary simulation, and threat intelligence priorities. Download the TLP: WHITE version of the report today.

Italy and Romania take down cyber fraud ring
generating €20 million per year in criminal profits
The Italian National Postal and Communication Police Unit and the Romanian National Police, supported by Europol and Eurojust, dismantled an organised criminal group involved in financial fraud, cybercrime and money laundering. On 7 July, authorities carried out 12 house searches and arrested 12 individuals (8 in Italy and 4 in Romania). The operation led to the seizures of personal computers, credit cards, properties, vehicles and other assets with an overall estimated value of over €1.5 million.

The criminal organisation was using a wide network of money mules in Italy, created to launder criminal proceeds from a variety of cybercrime activities. The criminal group was involved in financial frauds and cyber scams such as rental fraud (fraud through the advertisement of non-existent properties to rent) and CEO fraud (impersonating a company official to trigger large transfers to bogus accounts). With these frauds, the criminals were deceiving victims across Europe into making wire transfers to Italian bank accounts, owned by the money mules. It is estimated that the criminal group has generated up to €20 million losses per year for victims across Europe. europol.eu

Hackers Path of Least Resistance - Your Partners - Your Backdoors
Cybersecurity Safeguards Should Extend to Supply-Chain Partners

Companies need to start thinking about cybersecurity as a supply-chain problem.

Most organizations focus on securing their own networks. But supply-chain partners can remain exposed, offering backdoor access to a wealth of customer and product information. Indeed, research suggests that over 60% of data breaches are linked to third-party vendors.

Managing these vulnerabilities requires companies to collaborate with key supply-chain partners in ways such as jointly assessing risks in the supply chain and coordinating investments in safeguards.

Without collaboration, companies may fail to fully consider partner capabilities and incentives in investments and so may misallocate resources. A substantial investment in securing customer data at one company, for instance, can easily be undermined by a supplier with access to the same data but with weak financial incentives for safeguards.

When companies ignore their supply-chain partners and invest solely in their own security, their actions may only shift cyberattacks toward more vulnerable members of the supply chain.

There are four fundamentals to consider in establishing a collaborative approach to supply-chain cybersecurity:

Understand the risks; map the end-to-end supply chain; model the likelihood and impact of relevant risks; and coordinate investments to protect the entire supply chain.

Cyber criminals often have a far wider view of corporate enterprises, and will typically take the path of least resistance. wsj.com

56% of Large Companies Handle 1,000+ Security Alerts Each Day

70% of IT security, volume of security alerts doubled in five years

A new report on the state of SecOps and automation polled 427 IT security stakeholders, all of whom are responsible for corporate security at organizations with more than 1,000 employees. Seventy percent said the volume of security alerts they receive on a daily basis have more than doubled in the past five years. Most (93%) said they cannot address all alerts in the same day; 83% said staff has alert fatigue.

Researchers point to several drivers behind the increase. The primary reason is constant change to the type of security threats that must be blocked (67%), followed by the addition of new tools to monitor for these threats (60%), overall growth of business applications and services (57%), increase in cloud infrastructure (55%), and growth in user endpoints to monitor (52%).

Nearly all respondents agree the high alert volume is a burden. Most (68%) said they worry that important problems will be lost in a flood of minor issues, 66% are concerned about wasting time on chasing false positives, and half fear their team members will feel overwhelmed by alerts.

How many alerts is too many? Of businesses with more than 10,000 employees, 56% said they chase more than 1,000 alerts per day. Overall, 39% of all respondents said they handle 1,000 alerts per day. The same percentage experience between 100 and 1,000 alerts daily, researchers report.

Read more details and check out the full report here. darkreading.com

Daily Buzz: Tell Your Employees to Check Their Router’s Firmware Security
ZDNet reports that Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Communication (FKIE) carried out a study involving 127 home routers from seven brands—Netgear, ASUS, AVM, D-Link, Linksys, TP-Link, and Zyxel—to check for the presence of known security vulnerabilities in the latest firmware.

The results? Appalling, writes ZDNet’s Liam Tung. The study found that 46 routers hadn’t gotten a single security update within the past year and that many routers are affected by hundreds of known vulnerabilities. About 90 percent of the routers in the study used a Linux operating system, but manufacturers weren’t updating the OS with fixes made available from Linux kernel maintainers.

On top of that, the study found that vendors who are shipping firmware updates are doing so without fixing known vulnerabilities, meaning even consumers who install the latest firmware are not safe. associationsnow.com

70% of organizations experienced a public cloud security incident in the last year
– including ransomware and other malware (50%), exposed data (29%), compromised accounts (25%), and cryptojacking (17%), according to Sophos.

Organizations running multi-cloud environments are greater than 50% more likely to suffer a cloud security incident than those running a single cloud. helpnetsecurity.com