‘Solutions’ Are the Focus of Revamped Chicago Axis Experience Center
On Oct. 9 Axis Communications held a grand reopening of its Axis Experience Center (AEC) in Chicago, which was expanded and revamped to focus on solutions that go beyond just network video to also include network access control and network audio systems, and how they all integrate with products from Axis’ technology partners. Highlights of the AEC are the new Solutions Lab where visitors can get hands on with technologies from Axis and its partners and the new Security Operations Center that emulates the platform used by the city of Chicago’s Office of Emergency Management, which monitors more than 30,000 cameras.

View the champagne toast and ceremonial ribbon cut here.
View more pictures from the event here.

The State of USA Retail: Apocalypse or Renaissance?

By Tony D'Onofrio, Global Retail Influencer

Recently I had the pleasure of speaking at the Loss Prevention Research Council (LPRC) Impact 2019 conference. Over 430 people made their way to the University of Florida’s Gainesville campus for the three-day event. The symposium "focused heavily on learning and collaboration, as well as an overview of the LPRC’s research on evidence-based tactics and strategies to reduce crime and loss in the retail space".

As part of a senior retail executive session, I contributed this excerpt of my continuously updated "Disruptive Future of Retail" presentation. What is the state of the global retail industry? Is USA retail a dying industry? What's in the mind of the new omnichannel shopper and how is it changing? What's the impact on the loss prevention function? What's driving disruption? Why is LPRC positioned to lead at the speed of NEW retail?

The Loss Prevention Digital Collision

For the Loss Prevention Research Council audience, I pointed out that current digital trends are leading to a collision between the smartphone empowered consumer and retail theft opportunities. The CXX functions of progressive retail companies are focused on strategies to dramatically reduce friction in the shopping experience. Increasing friction to deter theft has been the primary historical strategy for the loss prevention.

Truly believe that with the correct execution of strategies and emerging mix of technologies this is a critical moment for Loss Prevention to achieve value differentiation and elevate their function to the CXX leadership table.  Read More Here

Rethink Retail Podcast: Apple’s new and improved flagship, sustainability trends, and holiday season shopping projections

Tony D’Onofrio on the upcoming Holiday Season:
In my view, the days of doing business as usual for brick and mortar stores are over and they’ve been over for a while. Today, it’s all about creating frictionless experiences across channels, and that will be true this holiday season and for all the holiday seasons going forward. A recent study that I saw, basically said that, today versus five years ago, 54% less people shop in malls, 31% shop less in a store, but 73% more online and 61% are shopping on smartphones. What that means is that, stores are not going to go away, but they need to change and adapt to this new consumer that is coming into the store.

John Boline, Vice President of Store Design, Starbucks:
I do think that brick and mortar have a very important role in getting people to experience products and services. Just as we talked about the Apple store, certainly working with Starbucks for a number of years. We rely on footfall and people getting off the couch. But we are very in tune with the fact that, so many more of the transactions are happening from a couch, whether it’s delivery or pickup, and we’re making enhancements in that. Listen or Read More Here
 

Baltimore, MD: Mondawmin Mall workers express fear, anger at mall management, city officials after armed robbery Sunday
An armed robbery Sunday afternoon at the Mondawmin Mall has employees worried about their safety, but some staff and merchants said they were concerned long before a group held employees of a mall jewelry store at gunpoint.

“Security is a problem — I don’t like to work at this mall,” said Belal Hossain of the NS Jewelers kiosk. He said the kiosk’s glass showcases have repeatedly been broken into over the nearly three years that he’s worked there. “Ask any employee. Their life is not safe,” he added.

Sunday’s robbery of RK Jewelers is one of four commercial robberies at the mall so far this year, Baltimore police spokesman Jeremy Silbert said in an email. He said the department has increased vehicular and foot patrols outside and inside of the mall in response to the latest incident.

On Monday, some of the shops and kiosks shut their doors in solidarity with the robbery victims, store owners said. RK Jewelers remained closed Tuesday. Signs on its windows and front gate read “Protect Mall from Daily Incidents,” “Malls Are For Shopping Not For Shooting,” and “Safety First,” among others. baltimoresun.com

La Mesa, CA: Vons Accused of Transferring Employees Facing Sexual Harassment, Assault Allegations
A first job is often seen as the first step in becoming an adult. But for some teenagers, they are thrust into a world of harassment, where older supervisors greet them with sexual innuendo, inappropriate questions, and in the case of one 16-year-old girl; rape.

Attorneys for the then-16-year-old east San Diego County woman say Safeway Companies, one of Southern California's largest grocery store chains, showed a preference to sweep sexual harassment claims under the rug, transferring the accused instead of taking disciplinary action, allowing predators to prey on young, innocent victims.

Workplace harassment of underage girls nationwide is common. According to a 2011 survey from the American Association of University Women, half of high school girls that were surveyed experienced some form of sexual abuse or harassment in a given year. In an unrelated study, researchers from UC San Diego found that 81% of women experience some form of sexual harassment in their lives - 38% of sexual harassment reports by women occur at the workplace. nbcsandiego.com

Kroger workers say firings and job changes have sparked
fear and 'chaos' in some stores
A management overhaul at Kroger stores involving hundreds of firings, demotions, and transfers has sparked fear, uncertainty, and "chaos" in some stores, according to current and recent employees.

The restructuring, which Business Insider first reported, has affected hundreds of people in management positions, some of whom had worked for the company for decades, sources said. Store managers and assistant store managers are among the roles affected by the cuts.

Some Kroger employees are worried that the company could be planning additional cuts to jobs and labor hours. businessinsider.com

Hong Kong Protesters Are Targeting Starbucks. Apple Could Be Next.
Pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong have singled out companies like Starbucks and Japanese restaurant empire Yoshinoya as sympathizers with the authoritarian Chinese Communist Party in Beijing. The companies’ vulnerabilities are growing, as activists turn increasingly to vandalism and to boycotts. And Hong Kong’s reputation as a hub of freewheeling capitalism, with one of the world’s most business-friendly environments, is already suffering. These days, workers regularly sweep up glass from shops with broken windows, as shuttered storefronts with graffiti sit in the shadows of gleaming skyscrapers.

Last weekend, protesters called for rallies in shopping malls and a boycott of allegedly pro-China restaurants and stores — with a small, hard-core contingent encouraging the “renovating” (smashing) or “decorating” (spray-painting graffiti) of those locations.

At a Starbucks branch in the Tseung Kwan O district, a few protesters used hammers and a fire extinguisher to smash glass shelves, while others threw plates and trays on the ground. “The heavens will destroy the Communist Party” was spray-painted on a counter.

Activists called for protests at Apple stores after the company removed an app, HKmap.live, from its App Store that showed the locations of police officers in real time. But there have not been attacks on Apple stores yet. Apple has enormous business interests in China, which is its third biggest market after the United States and Europe, and the decision to remove the app was criticized by pro-democracy activists and lawmakers. Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said the app was removed because people were using it to track down officers to attack them or pinpoint sites to target when the police were not present. nytimes.com

Security Industry Association Introduces New SIA Center of Excellence
The Security Industry Association (SIA) has unveiled the new SIA Center of Excellence, a member-driven learning consortium for education, research and training resources serving the security industry. This online repository of vendor-neutral, vetted information includes easy-to-access, on-demand learning and development tools and resources like training courses, e-learning modules, webinars and articles created to improve individual, team and organizational performance.

“The SIA Center of Excellence was created to foster security industry expertise and help SIA members and the entire security ecosystem stay at the forefront of evolving market demands,” said SIA CEO Don Erickson. “This new learning tool will help provide tangible value to our members and help raise the industry’s level of professionalism and knowledge.” securityindustry.org

Department of Justice Awarding Public Safety Funding Around the Country
DOJ Awards $122M to Michigan, $16.5M to Northern District in Dallas This Week
Each year the DOJ awards millions around the country to help law enforcement agencies and community organizations in jurisdictions across the states fight gun, gang, drug and sexual violence, and bring criminals to justice.

The awards include funds to hire and train law enforcement officers and to support state, local and tribal law enforcement activities. Funding will help agencies purchase body-worn cameras, investigate child exploitation cases, address domestic and sexual violence, improve criminal history records and administer victim service programs. Funds will also help jurisdictions prevent school violence, provide inmate reentry services, apply DNA technology to solving crimes and combat opioid and other drug abuse.

The grants announced today will give sheriffs and city police departments more resources to keep their various locals safe, and the DOJ hopes these funds will offset some of the recent state budget cuts. justice.gov

Editor's Note: Over the years, we've reported on a number of these grants having been applied to fund ORC efforts and holiday shoplifting teams around the country.

WeWork says it found cancer-causing chemical in its phone booths
Cash-strapped WeWork, the office-sharing company that is trying to negotiate a financial lifeline, has a new problem that may prove costly. It has closed about 2,300 phone booths at some of its 223 sites in the United States and Canada after it says it discovered elevated levels of formaldehyde.

The company, which abandoned plans for an initial public offering last month after investors questioned its mounting losses and the way it was being run, said in an email to its tenants on Monday that the chemical could pose a cancer-risk if there is long-term exposure. reuters.com

NRF: September retail sales grew 4.5% over last year
Retail sales in September were down 0.1 percent seasonally adjusted from August but up 4.5 percent unadjusted year-over-year, the National Retail Federation said today. The numbers exclude automobile dealers, gasoline stations and restaurants.

“The pullback in September compared with August is possibly a reaction to increased fears over U.S.-China tensions,” NRF Chief Economist Jack Kleinhenz said. “While uncertainty around trade policy and other issues has dampened consumer sentiment recently, consumers still have a lot going for them as evidenced by longer-term trends and factors like the tight labor market.” nrf.com

Consumers pull back spending in September, snapping 6-month streak
September retail sales fell 0.3% from August, though they rose 4% year over year, the U.S. Department of Commerce said Wednesday. Even nonstore retailers (mostly e-commerce) fell 0.3% from the previous month, rising 12.9% from last year, according to the federal report. The declines hit most segments, with furniture and home stores, and drugstores each notching a 0.6% gain and clothing stores rising a relatively robust 1.3% from August. Electronics and appliance stores were flat. retaildive.com
 

Senior LP & AP Jobs Market

Director of Loss Prevention Operations job posted for Nike in Beaverton, OR
In this role, you will be responsible for maintaining the global vendor relationships, performance requirements and measuring business results. You will bring strong financial acumen and be responsible for the financial planning of the Global Loss Prevention budget commitments, as well as the volume-based methodologies within each team. In partnership with the Senior Director, you will develop and maintain a strategy for facilitating geo support and communication within the team. As part of the work, you will identify the return on investment for programs to gain buy-in from all stakeholders. In partnership with the LP Operations Managers in geos, you will ensure our geo partners are set up for success with all necessary resources when rolling out and updating programs. linkedin.com

As of 2019, Nike operates more than 1,100 retail stores throughout the entire world. According to its 2018 annual report, Nike generated about $36.4 billion in revenues, or just under $16 billion in gross profit.
 

The Children’s Place to resurrect Gymboree brand

Adidas and Nike supply tactics are an abuse of market dominance, British retail giant says

6 lessons from Blockbuster's demise still relevant to retailers today
 

Together We Are Stronger

By Suzie Squier, President, RH-ISAC

The RH-ISAC community grows every year and the 2019 Retail Cyber Intelligence Summit in Denver was a testament to our growing community and a success because of it! We had nearly 300 attendees talking cybersecurity, sharing best practices and planning how to protect as one over the next year.

Check out some highlights from a few of our sessions and speakers from this year and be sure to stay tuned for 2020 speaker and session announcements!

The Summit started with a sector-wide tabletop exercise, sponsored by Castle, for the RH-ISAC Securing Retail Alliance (SRA) special interest group. The SRA group includes security-focused member companies building the maturity of their program. During the exercise, 45 RH-ISAC members were able to test responses and resources in preparation for an incident. CISOs with years of experience helped to moderate their table’s responses. This successful tabletop gave our members better insight into their networks and incident response.

Read the full article and see more pictures here.

Facial recognition systems can be vulnerable to deep morphing/ deep fakes, researchers say
Some 95 percent of deepfakes are accepted by biometric facial recognition systems, found a study conducted by Pavel Korshunov and Sebastien Marcel from Idiap Research Institute in Martigny, Switzerland.

They found that visual quality metrics are most effective in detecting deep morphs with 8.97 percent equal error rate. The study is called Vulnerability of Face Recognition to Deep Morphing and can be reviewed here. The research were discussed at the Frontex International Conference on Biometrics for Borders 2019 in Warsaw.

Other research from Amsterdam-based cybersecurity company Deeptrace warns that deepfakes are spreading extremely fast online, “with the number of deepfake videos almost doubling over the last seven months to 14,678.” This is possible thanks to a high number of commodification tools that make it easier for individuals to create deepfakes and disseminate them through social media. The company noticed a high number of deepfakes and synthetic media tools arising from China and South Korea. biometricupdates.com

Rise in Ransomware Brings a Growing Role for Negotiators
As ransomware spreads to hospitals and businesses across the country, victims are discovering that resolving these incidents is more complicated than deciding whether or not to pay up.

A key question is whether the attacker can actually unlock the encrypted data, said Robert Shimberg, an attorney at law firm Hill Ward Henderson PA. The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned companies this month of “high-impact ransomware attacks,” advising organizations to avoid paying ransoms in part because there is no guarantee that data will be restored.

“You want to have as much assurance as possible that if you pay money to someone they can provide a deliverable to you - otherwise, you’re just throwing money away,” Mr. Shimberg said.

Paying a ransom doesn’t always make sense, Mr. Shimberg said. Victims must calculate the expense of a prolonged disruption and the price of rebuilding lost systems and data, and compare those to the amount demanded and how likely it is that the recovery will be successful, he said.

Organizations that do decide to negotiate should always involve law enforcement to leverage their expertise and help crack down on the schemes, he said. They should also consult with third-party IT experts to make sure that any decryption key or file sent by attackers won’t cause additional damage.

In general, it doesn’t hurt for organizations to try to broker a better deal with the attackers, he said. “The worst they can say is that this is not negotiable.” wsj.com

Outback Steakhouse wants to know if A.I. tech can help improve customer service
The next Outback Steakhouse you walk into could be more similar to an Amazon Go store than you would think. The casual-dining chain, which is owned by Bloomin’ Brands, is piloting machine learning technology from Presto at several restaurants operated by one of its franchisees, Evergreen Restaurant Group.

Cameras, discreetly placed in the lobby, capture hosts, waiters and customers and analyze their interactions to improve customer satisfaction. The technology can track long wait times, the cleanliness of lobbies and the number of customers who leave without being seated or greeted. Managers and staff members can receive notifications in real time, before customers leave angry Yelp reviews.

The Outback pilot focuses on the lobby but could expand to dining rooms, the kitchen and curbside pickup areas. cnbc.com

Chipotle app users report phantom charges

918,000 tech jobs unfilled in the U.S.

1 in 5 IT security professionals fear their connected toilets will be hacked
 

Providence Woman Admits to Role in $1.3M Multi-State Fraud Gang
A Providence woman appeared in U.S. District Court today and admitted to her role in a far-reaching multi-state fraud scheme that defrauded banks, finance companies, car dealerships, and retailers of more than $1.3 million.

Yenesia Pujols, 47, admitted to the court that beginning in as early as June 2016, she began to work with Octavio Andres Difo-Castro, 28, of Brooklyn, New York, who previously admitted to the Court that he employed several individuals, including Pujols, who, at his direction, opened bank accounts and applied for and received financing for automobiles, clothing, and electronic devices using fraudulent driver’s licenses, Social Security numbers, and other documents he created with stolen information he purchased on the Dark Web.

Obtaining retail store credit and make purchases at clothing and cellphone retailers in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania. Pujols is scheduled to be sentenced on January 14, 2019. justice.gov

Gurnee, IL: Apple products stolen in smash-and-grab burglary at Best Buy
Police are investigating after three males smashed a Best Buy door with a rock and stole Apple products from the retail store Monday in Gurnee. The Gurnee Police Department responded around 9:55 p.m. Monday to the Best Buy, 6525 Grand Avenue, for a report of a burglary. Gurnee Police Spokeswoman Shawn Gaylor said that police officers arrived and found the front door glass had been smashed with a rock. Video surveillance captured three male blacks with hoodies entering the store and taking several Apple computers and cellphones from the display stand, Gaylor said. Value of stolen merchandise has yet to be determined. lakemchenryscanner.com

Fresno, CA: Thieves steal $13K from Visalia Harley-Davidson store
Two suspects broke into the Visalia Harley-Davidson in Goshen off Highway 99, and it was all caught on camera. With a large crowbar in hand, they pried the front doors open. Faces covered and each with a trash can in hand, they made a mad dash for the apparel section. "They went strictly for leather jackets and basically took every men's leather jacket we had except for one," said general manager, Geoff Allan. They pulled expensive leather goods off the rack and stuffed them into their cans, and once they were filled to the brim they drag them out of the store. In minutes Allan says they stole $13,000 worth of merchandise. abc30.com