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Privacy Concerns Over In-Store Facial Recognition Programs
Informed consent key to compliant retail facial recognition deployments
While it becomes increasingly popular for retailers to implement facial recognition technology for anti-theft purposes, one case in Spain has seen complaints for lack of adherence to European GDPR regulations, while a U.S.-based poll reiterates these concerns via a public opinion poll.

In July of 2020 two complaints were filed at The Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) against Spanish supermarket chain Mercadona for the use of face biometrics systems in forty stores, without getting the informed consent of all customers, which is where it fell afoul of the law, says Veridas in a legal analysis.

The systems, part of a pilot project, used a 1:N system which uses biometric data aimed at identifying a specific person from among several (one-to-many, or 1:N). Mercadona was issued a fine by AEPD, which argued that the usage of such biometric systems and the processing of personal data ultimately affected those who the system was used on.

In the United States, some major retailers like Macys and Lowes have been using facial recognition to help to better detect organized retail theft and repeat offenders. Forty percent of people surveyed were unaware of this fact and while 42 percent of people said they did not mind this, 38 percent did not support the use of the technology.

Many stores do not openly disclose the use of the technology therefore the public are not aware of the data which is being processed and how. Similarly, in Canada during June, several licensed liquor and cannabis retailers were found to have been collecting individual biometric data without adequate privacy management programs or documented privacy policies despite obligations under British Columbia’s private sector Personal Information Protection Act (PIPA).

Reflected in the survey, 68 percent of people said stores using facial recognition should inform people beforehand and 65 percent agreed that people should be given the option to opt out. Though it was found that opinions on the biggest advantage of facial recognition technology usage is fraud and threat detection (38 percent), others said it would result in faster checkout and less waiting time (16 percent).

Overall, according to the responses in Piplsay’s survey, it seems people are less bothered by the technology when they are warned of it in advance. biometricupdate.com

Frictionless Retail
How In-Store Tech Will Transform Retail

Automation and sensors promise a better customer experience — and fuel for improved analytics.

The so-called frictionless store has become the new gold standard in the retail world. However, the term is a bit of a misnomer. The goal is to use digital technology to meet consumer expectations of flexibility, instant gratification, convenience, immersive shopping, safety, and speed. But early adopters aren’t removing all points of friction. Rather, their strategies vary substantially depending on which friction points they want to remove.

Adopting digital technologies that remove friction from the traditional retail model can produce several advantages. The first is an improved customer experience. Customers today expect the same speed and convenience in person that they get online. Stores that can deliver that experience will strengthen customer loyalty, making them more competitive with online sellers and creating an advantage over physical retail competitors that don’t offer comparable speed and convenience. The pandemic, which forced social distancing, also led customers to expect more space and less physical contact in stores.

Second, digitizing gives retailers a chance to collect and analyze more — and more granular — data on customer preferences and behavior, leveling the playing field with online sellers and enabling personalized recommendations and promotions. In addition, physical retailers can capture what customers do in stores: the paths they traverse, which products they pick up and put back down, and even how long they hesitate while trying to choose between two products. Stores can use this data to improve operations, including inventory management, pricing, and physical product placement.

Finally, stores can make better use of human capital: By automating routine work like stocking shelves, companies free their employees to do the higher-value work of helping customers. This human touch can provide a competitive advantage over e-commerce.

However, the frictionless store is not without potential pitfalls and risks. Privacy is among the biggest. sloanreview.mit.edu

Safety Executive Salaries
How Much Is a Safety Leader Worth?

The 2021 National Safety & Salary Survey identifies what a typical safety leader gets paid, and how satisfied they are with their jobs and the EHS profession.

Since no two safety leaders are alike, we took a deeper dive into the survey results to learn, for instance, that while the Midwest has the most safety professionals, the area of the country that pays the most is the West Coast. The Pacific region’s average salary of $96,991 is more than $11,000 higher than the North Central’s $85,617. Of course, everything is relative, and that extra $11,000 might not compensate for the overall higher costs of living out West as opposed to the nation’s breadbasket region.

Similarly, more than one in four safety professionals in our survey work in manufacturing, either heavy (e.g., automotive, aerospace, shipbuilding) or light (e.g., apparel, consumer electronics), but neither industry is the highest-paying sector for safety professionals: heavy pays an average of $90,395 and light pays $84,337. The insurance industry actually pays the highest average salary to safety leaders, at $105,500; however, insurance accounts for only 1% of the total respondent pool, so take that smaller sample size into consideration as you scan the industry sector salaries.

As you would expect, it also matters exactly what position you hold at your organization. EHS directors/VPs earn an average salary of $115,057; EHS managers/supervisors earn far less, at $86,281; and EHS professionals (i.e., those who most likely don’t manage a staff) earn $79,059. Also as you would expect, the older you are, the more you’re likely to get paid. Those safety leaders age 65 or older (10% of the response base) earn the most, at $101,898. ehstoday.com

The Retail Wage Wars Continue
Fueled by Aggressive Growth, ALDI Plans to Hire More Than 20,000 Employees, Increase Wages Ahead of Holiday Season
ALDI is hiring more than 20,000 new store and warehouse employees to support its continued growth across the country and prepare for the busy holiday season. Available positions include store associate, cashier, stocker and warehouse associate at the grocery retailer's more than 2,100 stores and 25 warehouses across the country. ALDI will host a National Hiring Week from Sept. 20-24, during which stores and warehouses will have interview events to fill available positions.

Known for its competitive pay, ALDI now offers even higher wages, having recently increased pay for store and warehouse employees. The new average national starting wages for open store and warehouse positions will be $15 and $19 per hour, respectively, based on market and position. ALDI employees are also eligible for a range of benefits, including health care and retirement plans, financial wellness and employee assistance programs, and generous paid time off. prnewswire.com

Consumer Spending Is Up From Last Year
Americans are spending $765 more a month than they did in 2020, survey finds
As the economy recovers and the market notches new highs, most people are ready to live it up.

Between dining out and taking trips, Americans are now spending an average of $765 more a month compared to last year when much of the country was shut down due to the pandemic, according to the MassMutual Consumer Spending & Saving Index.

However, the recent surge in Covid cases fueled by the delta variant could upset these predictions. Already, in-person learning is in jeopardy at some schools, while many offices have delayed their return-to-work plans. cnbc.com

Walmart posts gains as customers shop in stores

Home Depot signals drop in home improvement projects as store traffic drops

Stocks take a hit as July retail sales decline

Turkeys could be in short supply over the holidays

Retail Ransomware Attacks
Nearly half of retailers hit by ransomware in 2020

In the face of increasingly prevalent and sophisticated ransomware attacks, retail organisations need to develop alternative ways of restoring lost or encrypted data, as paying the ransom does not guarantee its return in almost a third of cases

Around 44% of retail organisations were hit by a ransomware attack in 2020, and more than half of those affected (54%) said cyber criminals had succeeded in encrypting their data, according to Sophos’s State of ransomware in retail 2021 report.

Of those retailers whose data was encrypted, 32% paid the ransom to get their data back, and the average ransom payment was $147,811. A further 56% used backups to restore their data.

However, the Sophos research – which was based on a survey of 435 IT decision-makers in retail – also found that those who paid the ransom got back just 67% of their data on average, leaving almost a third of it completely inaccessible. Just 9% of ransom-paying organisations got all of their encrypted data back.

The average bill for rectifying a ransomware attack in the sector – when considering downtime, people time, device cost, network cost, lost opportunity, ransom paid, and more – was $1.97m.

Sophos also found that retail organisations were particularly vulnerable to a small but growing new trend of extortion-only attacks, whereby ransomware operators do not encrypt files, but instead threaten to leak exfiltrated information online if their ransom demand is not paid. This type of attack was experienced by 12% of retail ransomware victims.

“The comparatively high percentage of retail organisations hit with data theft-based extortion attacks is not entirely surprising. Service industries such as retail hold information that is often subject to strict data protection laws, and attackers are only too willing to exploit a victim’s fear of fallout from a data breach in terms of fines and damage to brand reputation, sales and customer trust,” said Chester Wisniewski, principal research scientist at Sophos.

The report added that cyber criminals were quick to exploit opportunities presented by the pandemic, which in retail was primarily the rapid growth of e-commerce and online shopping. computerweekly.com

Main Street America Needs to Get Serious About Cybersecurity
America’s small businesses aren't worried about hacking
A new survey conducted by CNBC and Momentive suggests that small businesses across the U.S. must be at little risk of being victims of a hack, or they are supremely overconfident about their place in the growing, national cybersecurity threat.

Among America’s small business owners, a net 56% said they are not concerned about being the victim of a hack in the next 12 months, and among those, 24% said they were “not concerned at all.”

And yet, only 28% of small businesses said in the event of a cyber attack they have a plan in place for response. Almost half (42%) said they have no plan; 11% revealed they were “not sure” if their business had a plan in place. Only about one-quarter (26%) say they carry cyber insurance.

“It’s a heads-in-sand moment for lots of these business,” said David Kennedy, founder of cybersecurity company TrustedSec and a former hacker himself.

“We’ve seen one-person family pizza shops be fully compromised. We’ve seen one-person retail shops compromised. Independent Uber drivers targeted,” he said.

The various types of “bad actors” out there include those just starting out in building their hacking infrastructure and pulling off the equivalent of hacking petty crimes before generating the cash to invest in more sophisticated attacks. The lowest levels of organized cybercrime and individual hacks successfully use business email compromise schemes to extract money from small firms.

“They will go after mom-and-pops and may only get $3,000 or $5,000, but that’s how it all starts. That’s how ransomware started, grandma and grandpa in churches, and how they invested more in hacking infrastructure,” Kennedy said.

He said not having a plan in place to respond to a cyberattack is the No. 1 issue.

“Every organization is susceptible,” he said, and it is not only that many don’t have plan, but have just “a few IT guys and no one dedicated to security.” cnbc.com

Digital Fraud Attempts on the Rise
Gaming, travel and leisure most targeted
As the prevalence of digital fraud attempts on businesses and consumers continues to rise, TransUnion’s analysis found that fraudsters are re-focusing their efforts from financial services to the travel and leisure and gaming industries.

Across industries, the rate of suspected digital fraud attempts rose 16.5% globally when comparing Q2 2021 to Q2 2020. In the U.S., the percentage of digital fraud attempts increased at a similar rate (17.1%) during the same time period.

Gaming and travel and leisure were the two most impacted industries globally for the suspected digital fraud attempt rate, rising 393.0% and 155.9% in the last year, respectively. In the U.S., this rate rose 261.9% for gaming and 136.6% for travel and leisure.

“It is quite common for fraudsters to shift their focus every few months from one industry to another,” said Shai Cohen, SVP of Global Fraud Solutions at TransUnion.

“Fraudsters tend to seek out industries that may be seeing an immense growth in transactions. This quarter, as countries began to open up more from their COVID-19 lockdowns and travel and other leisure activities became more mainstream, fraudsters clearly made this industry a top target. The immense growth in gaming fraud also can be attributed to the shifts in focus of fraudsters as this growing market becomes a larger target.” helpnetsecurity.com

Everybody is Getting Hit
Most organizations experienced at least one ransomware attack, multiple attacks very common
One third of organizations worldwide have experienced a ransomware attack or breach that blocked access to systems or data in the previous 12 months. And for those that fell victim to ransomware, it is not uncommon to have experienced multiple ransomware events, according to a survey from IDC.

“Ransomware has become the enemy of the day; the threat that was first feared on Pennsylvania Avenue and subsequently detested on Wall Street is now the topic of conversation on Main Street,” said Frank Dickson, program VP, Cybersecurity Products at IDC.

“As the greed of cybermiscreants has been fed, ransomware has evolved in sophistication, moving laterally, elevating privileges, actively evading detection, exfiltrating data, and leveraging multifaceted extortion. Welcome to digital transformation’s dark side!” helpnetsecurity.com

Even small businesses must manage cybercrime risks

Troubling New Disk-Level Encryption Ransomware Surfaces
 

Register Now for the 2021 RH-ISAC Summit - September 28-29

Hey LP/AP senior: If your retailer is a member you might want to consider attending yourself or sending one of your team members who works with cybersecurity on investigations or e-commerce fraud.

Especially now with the increased ransomware attacks and data beaches and the corresponding increased attention from law enforcement. Cross pollinating and building those relationships could pay off long term.  Register here

How to Get the Most Life Out of
Your iPhone’s Battery

We’ve all been there – you are halfway through a busy day and your phone is already on 25. So, how to get the most life out of your iPhone’s battery? The first step is to understand your usage of your phone. First, navigate to Settings > Battery to find a breakdown of the proportion of battery used by each app over the past 24 hours / 7 days. From there you can determine which apps are draining your battery. Did you know an overly bright display is the fastest way to deplete your battery? To change this, head over to Settings > Display & Brightness, and adjust. Email can also be a big culprit. To adjust how often iOS fetches new messages, navigate to Settings > Mail > Accounts > Fetch New Data. Managing which apps use location services, is also extremely helpful – to do so, go to Settings > Privacy > Location Services and adjust to your preference. If that still doesn’t help, utilizing a battery case, portable external battery can also extend battery life.

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It only takes seven seconds to make a first impression. With a job on the line, the pressure to immediately impress is even more intense. No wonder everyone can get frustrated.

The good news is that no matter what goes wrong -- you go to the wrong building, you spill water, you mispronounce the company name -- it's all about how you recover. The first rule is -- relax, take a deep breath and make a joke about it. Humility, honesty and calming down is the key to showing the employer that even when you're under pressure, you'll react the right way. Think about this before your interview because if something does happen you won't have time to think.


Just a Thought,
Gus

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