'Too Scared to Work in this Industry'
UK Retail Security Staff Threatened by 'Fearless' Thieves
Calls to the Police Sometimes Go Unanswered
A group of Ipswich retail security staff have spoken out about their daily battle with 'fearless' thieves - and the growing threat of being harmed for doing their jobs. One of the four, a store detective at out-of-town retail parks, handed in his notice this month, saying: "I'm not afraid to admit I'm too scared to work in this industry. I've been forced to quit because of personal safety."

With shoplifting up 12% across Suffolk in five years, the guards claim to be filling a public sector vacuum, with one saying: "Everywhere has problems, but from our point of view, Ipswich has never been as bad. I'm always expecting trouble." Another said safety was becoming "more and more a factor", with some offenders equipped with knives and needles.

"If we need help, we can call each other on linked radios, but if we call police, we get no answer. We've even had them turn the call off on us," he added. Another said punishments did little to deter thieves, adding: "Consider someone who commits 20 offences before being caught; presents to court over and over again, gets two weeks in prison, and then goes straight back to it."

"The other problem is organised groups working together to smash the town. They're hitting stores daily. They've intimidated staff and refused to leave stores. "They'll steal anything they can get their hands on. They find a way around anything we do to try to protect our stock." One security worker claimed he was asked by police to do more deterrent work and less reporting, while another said: "Retailers report a reduction in inventory as 'shrinkage'. I'd estimate at least half of it walks out of the door. With Christmas coming, it's going to get twice as bad." ipswichstar.co.uk

Nearly Half of Young Retail Workers Report Being Sexually Harassed, On Average, Seven Times a Year: Australian Human Rights Commission
A survey of more than 3,000 union members by the Australian Human Rights Commission, released today, shows young workers in the retail and fast food industries are more likely to be sexually harassed than those in other sectors. The largest group of harassers was customers, at 36 per cent.

Female retail workers under 30 years old were most likely to be harassed, making up 46 per cent of all victims. Of everyone in that age bracket who reported being sexually harassed, they revealed it happened, on average, seven times in the past year.

The survey found three-quarters of incidents took place at an employee's work station, such as a cash register or food preparation area. abc.net.au

FCC Targets China’s Huawei & ZTE, Designating Them 'National Security Threats'
Considering Requiring Companies to Remove Current Huawei & ZTE Equipment
The Federal Communications Commission is moving to place another restraint on the U.S. business of Huawei Technologies Co. and ZTE Corp. by banning U.S. companies receiving federal subsidies from purchasing the Chinese firms’ equipment.

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai set the proposal for vote at the agency’s meeting on Nov. 19. It would designate Huawei and ZTE as national security threats and tell U.S. firms not to buy their equipment using money from an $8.5 billion federal fund designed to expand telecommunications service in rural areas. That ban could take effect within 30 days, though it could take as long as 120 days if Huawei or ZTE contests it, an FCC official said.

The FCC is also studying whether to mandate that U.S companies replace Huawei and ZTE equipment they have already installed. In a commentary for the Wall Street Journal Monday, Mr. Pai called this existing equipment an “unacceptable risk” and said he was beginning a regulatory process aimed at removing it. wsj.com

Onfido's Global Fraud Index 2019
Criminals Professionalizing, Working Typical Workweeks

Fraud Likely to Get Worse - 18% of Russian Drivers Licenses Fraudulent - #1 Globally

Today Onfido published a report authored by its team of document specialists, outlining insights about fraud gained from the millions of identity documents it analyzes every year, across 4,500 document types and 195 countries. It is estimated that remote online identity fraud costs the economy $5 trillion a year, of which only 1% is recovered by the authorities. The Fraud Index shares insights Onfido has gained on the state of remote identity fraud over the past year.

One of the key findings from the report is that fraudsters carry out the majority of their crimes during the working week, much like a regular 9-5 profession. A dip in activity over the weekend suggests they like to take the weekend off. The implication is that fraudsters are working with a professional approach.

There are many reasons why some ID documents are more frequent targets for fraud. It's partly influenced by the lack of security in older versions of some documents still in circulation. Of the top 20 countries highlighted in Onfido's survey of most fraudulent documents, 18% of all Russian driving licenses analysed were suspected fraudulent. Vietnamese national ID cards came in second (12%) followed by Ukranian driving licenses (7.6%). Russian passports saw the least fraud (4%), while the United States passport came in the middle of the list at (6.1%).

"UK and US passports contain over 30 security features in their physical form, but fall to just 10 when digitized or moved online, making it easier for fraudsters to spoof IDV systems and scale their attacks," said Michael Van Gestel, Head of Global Document Fraud, at Onfido. onfido.com

H&M CEO Sees 'Terrible' Fallout as Consumer Shaming Spreads
Garment Industry Push Towards Climate Positive Impact
The chief executive officer of fashion giant Hennes & Mauritz AB says a growing movement that shames consumers represents a very real social threat.

Karl-Johan Persson, the 44-year-old H&M CEO and son of its billionaire chairman, is speaking out as a pattern of shaming that initially targeted air travelers spreads into more industries, including his. The movement has gained traction as Greta Thunberg, the Swedish teen activist, inspires millions of people across the globe to take to the streets and voice their anger over what she says is a climate crisis.

Persson, who has been running H&M for a decade, says his concern is that the movement seeks to prohibit behaviors. Many of the protests are "about 'stop doing things, stop consuming, stop flying'," Persson said in an interview in Stockholm. "Yes, that may lead to a small environmental impact, but it will have terrible social consequences."

The H&M CEO is a key figure in the $2.5 trillion fashion industry that has come under increasing scrutiny amid concerns about pollution and workers' rights in the developing economies that have tended to do the bulk of the manufacturing.

H&M estimates that about 70% of a garment's impact on the climate happens during the manufacturing process. By 2040, H&M intends to be climate positive, which it says means reducing more greenhouse gas emissions than its value chain emits. bloomberg.com

Hong Kong to enter recession after protests destroyed retailers and brought the city's tourist industry to its knees
Hong Kong is set to enter a recession this week after protests destroyed retailers and brought the city's booming tourist industry to its knees. Demonstrations in the semi-autonomous Chinese city erupted in June over a proposed extradition bill, but have since evolved to include demands for greater democratic freedoms.

Retailers and local businesses have taken a huge hit as a result of the increasingly violent protests, and the number of tourists into the city has fallen dramatically. Third-quarter growth numbers, due to be released on Thursday, are expected to show a second consecutive quarter of negative growth for the city's economy.

The city's tourism and retail industries have taken a particularly bad hit, he added in a Sunday blog post, noting that the number of visitors into Hong Kong plunged in the first half of October 2019, average hotel occupancy rates have also fallen in the same period and the total sales volume among retailers decreased by 25.3% in August, compared to last year, becoming the steepest year-on-year decline for a single month on record. businessinsider.com

Trump ordered Defense chief to 'screw Amazon' out of $10B contract, book reportedly says
President Donald Trump ordered former Defense Secretary James Mattis to "screw Amazon" out of the chance to bid on a $10 billion Pentagon contract, a new biography of Mattis says, according to a report this week by military-focused website Task & Purpose.

The cloud computing services contract, for the Defense Department's Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure (JEDI), was awarded to Microsoft on Friday. Trump issued his directive to Mattis during a phone call last year, the biography said, according to Task & Purpose, which received an advance copy. CNET hasn't reviewed the biography, Holding the Line: Inside Trump's Pentagon With Secretary Mattis, by Guy Snodgrass, a former speechwriter for Mattis. cnet.com

NRF Podcast: How tariffs are impacting retailers
As the trade war continues, U.S. businesses and consumers are paying the price, but how did we get here and what is the end game? Scott McCandless, Trade Policy Leader for PwC US, joins the Retail Gets Real podcast along with NRF Chief Lobbyist David French to shed light on how tariffs are impacting the industry.

While trade policy may change overnight, the complex global supply chains that transport the goods U.S. retailers rely on take longer to adjust. Tariffs are paid by the American businesses that receive the goods as they are imported, and the cost is often passed down the supply chain. As the price of tariffs continue to rise, some retailers are unable to absorb the costs and must pass them on to the consumer by way of raising prices. nrf.com

Retail Warehouses Renting 'Cobots' to Help During Holiday Push
By 2025 27.6% of warehouses globally will deploy commercial robots
Some businesses are ordering up extra fleets of collaborative robots, or "cobots," that use cameras, lasers and sensors to navigate warehouse aisles and lead workers to the right shelves or to shuttle bins full of products between workstations. Many are available for lease.

Scarcity of labor, the push for faster delivery and the aging workforce are accelerating automation at warehouses. wsj.com

CEO defends Beyond Meat as shares tank:
‘My focus is entirely on growing this business’
Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown says the alternative meat producer is concentrating on disrupting the food industry rather than partnering with industry giants. “People have asked me, ‘Do you want to do a partnership with a larger company?’ I have no interest in that. I want to be that larger company,” he says. Shares of Beyond Meat were plunging, with insiders free for the first time Tuesday to sell stock after the May initial public offering. Despite Tuesday’s weakness and other bouts of recent selling, the stock was still up more than 230% since its IPO was priced at $25 per share. cnbc.com

Nordstrom family ends latest effort to take control
Nordstrom on Monday stated that its board of directors and co-Presidents Pete and Erik Nordstrom said that they had "terminated by … mutual agreement" a proposal that "certain members of the Nordstrom family" would boost their share of common stock from about 31% to slightly more than 50%, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The notice puts to rest any notion that the family would retake firm control of the business. retaildive.com

Newly-opened American Dream mall appears to have everything but customers
I took the New Jersey express bus line to American Dream on opening day and found it almost entirely empty. When I got to the mall, it was devoid of the large crowds that characterized Mall of America when it first opened in 1992. businessinsider.com
 

Senior LP & AP Jobs Market

Senior Loss Prevention Manager job posted for for Gap Inc. in San Francisco, Calif.
Responsible for applying his/her Loss Prevention expertise and devise a Loss Prevention strategy and hold accountability within assigned stores (20 + stores). Takes a proactive approach to resolving losses within assigned stores through training and awareness. Responsible for all investigations, operations, training, and LP budget in assigned stores. Create and deliver Loss Prevention training to head of stores, merchandise managers and district management. Responsible for recruiting, hiring, training, developing and supervising of 10+ members of Loss Prevention personnel which includes LPM’s, ALPM’s, LPS’s, LPA’s and LPSR’s. corporate.gapinc.com

Sr. LP Program Manager, Amazon Books & Amazon Go in Seattle, WA removed from website

 

Walgreens lays off HQ employees, scraps bonuses and boosts cost-cutting goal to $1.8 billion

Juul to cut 500 jobs in coming months

Alliance Retail Group Tops 1,000 Partner Stores In 30 States

Sec. Mattis bio claims Trump ordered Amazon be denied big contract

Ransomware Incidents Jump 37% in Q3 2019
Ransoms Over $1 Million Are Now Commonplace, Insurers Say
Claims managers are now regularly dealing with ransoms that are over $1 million, said executives at an insurance-industry conference hosted by Advisen Ltd. last week. Even two or three years ago, the amounts were so small as to be “completely irrelevant,” said Jeremy Gittler, practice leader and head of cyber claims Americas in the company’s AXA XL division. Adding to the pressure, criminals often demand that the sums be paid within 24 hours.

Mr. MacDonald said a manufacturing client became infected with ransomware on a Thursday evening and hackers asked for $1.25 million to unlock more than 4,000 systems. He spent the evening discussing the situation with the client and had to seek permission from his head office in London the next morning to bypass the usual forms and meetings typically necessary to release such a significant sum.

This kind of scramble isn’t sustainable, he said, due to the financial pressure and procedural issues this creates for insurers—particularly if such claims become more frequent. Many might change the way they work as a result.

Beazley has seen ransomware incidents jump 37% in the third quarter of 2019 from the second quarter, the company said in a report last week. Small businesses reported just over two-thirds of the cases. Around a quarter of incidents were the result of a breach at a third party, such as a service provider or vendor. wsj.com

Artificial Intelligence Bolsters Physical Security
AI Tech Will Expand in Retail & Other Sectors

Machine learning enhances cameras, access control; but robots will not take over anytime soon

There is a growing cadre of software offerings that use artificial intelligence to power through reams of data and notice certain predetermined visual information – whether it’s someone’s face, or a certain license plate, or simply human movement in a place and time where there shouldn’t be any. Talk about AI sometimes gets carried away, with some observers exaggerating both its current abilities and its likelihood of being misused, industry experts say. But it seems likely that AI will continue to gain converts in the security space as the technology develops.

Facial Recognition
The “wow factor” for Robins and his staff at Santa Fe ISD is when their system began recognizing people based on 20-year-old photos, or when they were wearing hoodies or glasses – although the accuracy dropped somewhat with the latter, he says. And the potential hit especially close to home when the system was asked to search for one of Robins’ twin sons—and picked the young man out of a crowded hallway before Robins himself did.

AI for License Plate Recognition
Artificial intelligence-enabled cameras and access control systems can be set up to handle license plate recognition as cars go in and out of parking lots and other facilities.

Other Use Cases
Vendors of other AI-enabled physical security products see a range of possible use cases, in sectors including retail, banking, healthcare and public housing. securitymagazine.com

Equifax lawsuit offers more evidence against passwords
Equifax's internal security policies were a mess and directly led to one of the largest recorded data breaches in history, according to a lawsuit, demonstrating fundamental insecurities inherent in the use of passwords.

"Grossly inadequate" data protection measures that "failed to meet even the most basic industry standards", and the use of the username and password 'admin' to protect a portal used to manage credit disputes are just a few of the accusations levelled at troubled credit services provider Equifax.

The subsequent repercussions have included fines of up to $700m levied in the US, and £500,000 in the UK, the highest possible fine pre-GDPR, as well as the trashing of Equifax's reputation among its users.

Besides the use of laughably insecure usernames and passwords, these include failure to implement patching protocols, with one ill-informed individual tasked with managing patching across its entire network; failure to encrypt sensitive data, instead storing it in plain text on public-accessible servers; inadequate network monitoring and threat alerting practice; inadequate authentication measures; and use of obsolete software. computerweekly.com

Rethinking Cyber Insurance to Cover Privacy Mishaps
Insurance industry says most companies aren't compliant with major privacy laws. Supersize costs for breaching privacy laws are challenging insurance companies, which say that many clients aren't prepared to deal with the changes these rules bring.

Insurers worry that rules defining individuals' ownership of their data, and how that data is handled or retained, represent a fundamental challenge to how companies have typically handled customer information.

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation has been in effect since 2018 and the California Consumer Privacy Act is set to go live Jan. 1.

Despite these laws, companies aren't fully up-to-date with their data-management policies, Gamelah Palagonia, a senior vice president at insurance broker Willis Towers Watson PLC, said at an insurance-industry conference here last week. Many companies haven't designated specific employees as having responsibility for data as required by GDPR, she said, adding, "I think it would be difficult for anyone to say they're 100% compliant."

New rules mean individuals can demand that their personal information be deleted or returned to them, or transferred to another business. That forces companies to be able to track and retrieve this data on request. Fines could be levied against firms for breaches of privacy that aren't strictly the result of a cybersecurity incident. wsj.com

FTC Provides Tips for Warding Off Hackers
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has released an article with tips on how protect your personal information from being stolen by hackers. In support of National Cybersecurity Awareness Month (NCSAM), FTC provides recommendations on how to safeguard phones, computers, accounts, and personally identifiable information.

The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) encourages consumers to review the FTC article and the following additional resources for more information:

● NCSAM 2019 webpage
● Protecting Your Privacy
● Good Security Habits
● Preventing and Responding to Identity Theft
   us-cert.gov

Innovators in
EAS, Video & RFID

WG Security has made its mark in the industry as being the solution provider for chronic shortage problems for many retailers who look to them for answers. Ed Wolfe, Vice President of Business Development for WG, gives us a few examples of the chronic problems they’ve helped their customers solve, and tells us about the development of the Ninja Tag, their remote monitoring capabilities, and the new 5-alarm tag program WG developed.
 

North Long Beach, CA: Police surround Target, but burglars escape with electronics
SWAT officers were called to a burglary at a North Long Beach Target store overnight, but it turned out the suspects had fled before police arrived, according to authorities. Police said an alarm company called them around 2:50 a.m. Monday to report three people were inside the store on Cherry Avenue, just north of the 91 Freeway. Officers surrounded the store and called in help from SWAT, but, “It was later determined the suspects fled the scene on foot prior to officer arrival,” Long Beach police spokeswoman Shaunna Dandoy said. The burglars took “an unknown amount of electronics,” police said. lbpost.com

Nutley, NJ: Woman steals $28K Costco diamond ring after swap
Authorities say a woman stole a $28,000 diamond ring from a New Jersey Costco store by replacing it with a much cheaper ring she had stolen from a different Costco. Izaebela Kolano is facing a theft charge. Authorities say the 49-year-old Nutley woman stole a $2,000 diamond ring Sunday from a store in Wayne. She then traveled to the other store in Clifton and asked to see the other ring. Kolano allegedly gave employees there the cheaper ring in return and left the store with the more expensive one before workers realized what had happened. Kolano has been arrested. caspercourier.com

Buffalo, NY: Four women charged with shoplifting at Children’s Place in Orchard Park
Four Buffalo women were arrested Friday, accused of stealing items from a children's store in Orchard Park, according to Orchard Park Police. Police responding to a report of four women shoplifting at the Children's Place in a plaza on Amelia Drive observed the women getting into a vehicle. Police said the driver resisted an attempt by police to stop the vehicle inside the plaza. Patrol officers chased the vehicle down Milestrip Road to Transit Road in the Village of Orchard Park, where the individuals were boxed in by police. buffalonews.com

Bloomfield, NJ: Police Arrest Suspected $2,600 Shoe Burglar; 2 Still At Large
Bloomfield police arrested one of three teens suspected of stealing about $2,600 worth of sneakers from the Civilized Nation store. On Sunday, Bloomfield police announced that they have charged a 15-year-old juvenile from East Orange with burglary in connection with an Oct. 21 incident at the Civilized Nation store at 549 Bloomfield Avenue. According to the Bloomfield Police Department, officers responded to the store at 10:55 p.m. after receiving a report about a tripped burglar alarm. They found a glass door in the rear of the store smashed; about $2,600 worth of sneakers were missing, the owner said. patch.com

Beaumont, TX: Police seek 2 women in $1,200 Boot Barn theft

Muncy, IN Woman accused of stealing over $1,000 from Weis Markets

New Orleans, LA: NOPD seek Shoplifting suspect for the theft of 2 garbage bags full of baby cloths