Zebra Voted Top Software Vendor by Retailers in 2020 RIS Software LeaderBoard

Top rankings highlight the value of the integration of Profitect, now known as Zebra Prescriptive Analytics

Zebra Technologies Corporation, an innovator at the edge of the enterprise with solutions and partners that enable businesses to gain a performance edge, today announced the company was voted a top software vendor across 27 categories in RIS 2020 Software LeaderBoard.

This is the first time Zebra Technologies has been featured in the LeaderBoard. The company is listed alongside its recent acquisition, Profitect Inc., the leading provider of prescriptive analytics to the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industries. Recognized as "Zebra/Profitect" in this year's report, the company has made the esteemed "Top 20 Overall Ranking," jumping significantly from Profitect's ranking in last year's report. profitect.com
 

Top Retail CEOs of 2019


Target's Brian Cornell is the top CEO of 2019
Target has been dealing with competition from Amazon and Walmart while also trying to cater to fickle consumers who have swapped out traditional retail for shopping on their phones. But Target has found the right balance between physical stores and digital commerce. That's why Target's Brian Cornell is the CNN Business CEO of The Year.

Cornell beat out AMD's Lisa Su and Chipotle's Brian Niccol (who was our pick as top CEO in 2018) for the honor. Target's sales and profits consistently topped Wall Street's forecasts this year. Analysts are predicting healthy results for the holidays as well, with fourth quarter earnings per share expected to rise 11%. wicz.com

Walmart's McMillon Named HomeWorld Business Retail
Executive Of The Year
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon is the first annual HomeWorld Business Retail Executive Of The Year. McMillion since taking the helm in 2014 has emerged as the standard bearer leading Walmart's diverse, complex retail business into the omnichannel future, where e-commerce and brick and mortar combine as the basis for convenient ordering, store pickup and delivery, while emphasizing data integrity and privacy.

McMillon is helping Walmart embrace a retail future when technology continually improves the customer experience, and he is focused on ensuring technological and operational change is consistent with Walmart's strengths. homeworldbusiness.com
 

Chicago, IL: Shoplifting concerns rise, retailers target Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx
Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx is facing criticism for the way her office is handling shoplifting crimes, and it comes at the height of the holiday shopping season. Michael Edwards, president and CEO of the Chicago Loop Alliance, an organization that represents more than 200 stores on State Street. "People are coming in and grabbing armloads of merchandise and walking out of the store."

Edwards said retailers are concerned about Foxx's retail theft policy. After taking office, Foxx raised the felony threshold for theft from $300 to $1,000. Thirty states have set their threshold at $1,000 or more, according to the Pew Research Center. "It has unintended consequences," Edwards said. "And those unintended consequences are that people are coming in and stealing with impunity.

Foxx disagrees. "We still prosecute retail theft cases," Foxx said. "The difference is they are prosecuted, depending on the amount, as misdemeanors opposed to a felony." Foxx said gun violence and crimes are her priority, and she has chosen to shift the office's resources to reflect that focus. In 2016, when she was elected, retail theft made up 16% of the cases the State's Attorney reviewed, that's down to 9% this year. In the same period of time, the share of unlawful use of a weapon cases reviewed went from 14% to 23%. abc7chicago.com

Smile! Retailers 'Quietly' Want To Take More Of Your Pictures
The Associated Press reports that cameras are, at least somewhat quietly, making inroads into a number of retail outlets in a bid to, well, get to know you. In essence, they would target you through demographics spanning age and gender.

By way of example, at the National Retail Federation trade show in New York earlier this year, Mood Media showed off its smart shelves that aim to detect the moods of passersby. Separately, Cineplex Digital Media featured video screens that can map out if observers are wearing beards or glasses, with the goal of selling new glasses or beard accoutrements to them. Those screens can also target ads to people at drive-thrus and other points of shopping interaction.

Fast Food Picture
Another development comes from the drive-thru lanes of the fast-food industry, according to the Financial Times. It reported that "fast-food chains are looking to deploy cameras that recognize license plates in order to identify customers, personalize digital menus and speed up sales."

Security Cameras
Brick-and-mortar players often deal with some minimal data sets - how many customers came into a location, what sales and leading items turned out to be. This data certainly isn't nothing, but it pales in comparison to the data troves that digital retailers have. Retail already (mostly) had the main piece of hardware it needed to start pulling better insights from the floor. It just needed software that could take in all that visual data. pymnts.com

More online sales mean retailers need to solve a $50 billion returns problem this holiday season
Shoppers are expected to return $41.6 billion worth of merchandise bought on the internet this November and December, according to a study by commercial real estate services firm CBRE, in partnership with Optoro, a company that helps retailers process returns. That's up from a projection of $37 billion last year, and would make an all-time high, the report said.

This figure is calculated by assuming shoppers return, on average, 15% to 30% of online purchases. That's compared with a return rate of about 13% for shoppers at bricks-and-mortar stores.

The report by CBRE and Optoro said the overall returns rate in the retail industry continues to grow at 10% annually. This year, total returns of purchases made both in stores and online during the holidays are expected to top $100 billion, up from more than $90 billion last year, the firms said.

The retail industry should be taking the $41.6 billion seriously. Companies, more than ever, need to be prepared to handle a surge in returns of e-commerce orders. If they're not, they risk running into packages getting tangled up along their supply chains, with customers waiting on refunds to hit their credit cards, and then returned merchandise going unsold.

The retail industry loses $50 billion each year because of inefficiencies with handling returns, Optoro said. cnbc.com

Fired for being sick?
Starbucks to pay NYC workers thousands for illegal sick leave policy
Starbucks will pay New York City workers thousands restitution for having an illegal sick leave policy requiring employees to find substitutes when they needed to take days off - or risk discipline and even firing.

The coffee giant will pay at least $150,000 to impacted workers under a settlement announced by Mayor de Blasio and New York Attorney General Letitia James on Thursday.

Starbucks also has to put up $26,000 to the city that will be distributed to 23 employees identified during an investigation into the paid sick leave law violations.

The six-figure pot of money will be doled out to city Starbucks employees who worked 80 hours or more between January 2015 and December 2016 and were required to find replacements in order to use sick leave or disciplined for not finding someone to cover for them to stay home. nydailynews.com

Happy Holidays from The
D&D Daily Team!


Watch our elves in the workshop

Our office will be closed from Dec. 23-Jan. 1
The Daily will resume publication on Jan. 2, 2020
Stay tuned over the holidays for our special '2019 Year in Review' reports.

Thanks for reading and let's keep 'em all safe out there!
 

Wawa hit with massive payment data breach at 'all' stores
A data breach possibly affected payment information - including credit and debit card numbers - at all Wawa stores, the company’s chief executive said Thursday.

The malicious software was discovered on Wawa’s payment processing servers on Dec. 10 and contained by Dec. 12, according to Wawa CEO Chris Gheysens. The company has more than 800 gas station and convenience stores around the country.

“This malware affected customer payment card information used at potentially all Wawa locations beginning at different points in time after March 4, 2019 and until it was contained,” Gheysens said in a statement. “At this time, we believe this malware no longer poses a risk to Wawa customers using payment cards at Wawa, and this malware never posed a risk to our ATM cash machines.”

The company investigation revealed the breach affected “payment card information, including credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates, and cardholder names on payment cards,” used at possibly all Wawa in-store points of sale and fuel pumps, according to Gheysens.

Most Wawa locations were affected as of April 22 and some stores may not have been impacted at all, the statement said.  post-gazette.com 

How companies can fight against cyber threats

Cyber experts identify top cyber threats for 2020 and offer strategies of defense

As 2019 closes, 2020 is full of new possibilities and opportunities. While it’s a time for growth, change and newness, cyber criminals are lurking in the background ready to strike. The threats that these criminals have planned for the new year have already been months in the making and are far from cookie cutter. Therefore, companies must be alert and ready.

Top threats
With cybersecurity at the forefront of business operations, there are distinct cyber threats that businesses need to be aware of and educated about to properly identify and defend against.

“Phishing and ransomware will never go away,” Min Kyriannis, head, Technology Business Development, Jaros, Baum & Bolles, and member of SIA’s Cybersecurity Advisory Board, said. “AI makes the threats more insidious and craftier,” Pressler explained. Another threat to be on alert for is “attacks on mobile devices, now that more vulnerabilities are being uncovered,” Kyriannis said.

Setting the stage to fight against cyber threats
Companies need to realize they have many systems that are not accounted for. “The best thing for an organization to do is conduct a due diligence of all the systems they have within the business and develop and prioritize systems that would need to be serviced, maintained and remedied of any vulnerabilities,” Kyriannis advised.

With systems and gaps identified, a gap analysis of all systems and all devices that access the network should be done. Companies should also motivate employees to take an active part in cybersecurity. securitysystemsnews.com

Vitamin manufacturer uses AI to fight cyberattacks
The program, the Enterprise Immune System from Darktrace, detected the abnormal activity the refrigerators created on the network and automatically sent a threat incident report to IT that quickly determined the refrigerators were communicating unencrypted data across the internet.

The Darktrace system learns what normal behavior on a network looks like and detects when potentially dangerous or destructive behavior occurs, says Chris Zeller, director of information systems for Country Life Vitamins.

Before Country Life began working with Darktrace, Zeller was struggling with challenges like “shadow IT” — systems built without explicit organizational approval — and unknown events taking place on the network. With traditional security protocols such as antivirus software, he says, “I’d be kept up at night worrying about things I didn’t know about such as someone exfiltrating data, or whether people were putting things on the network that didn’t belong there.”

One version of the technology can automatically block abnormal activity until IT can examine it. Zeller also notes that Darktrace protects the sensitive, proprietary data of Country Life’s retail customers. He says he would have to hire at least two more IT workers to handle what Darktrace does. stores.org

Higher Degree, Higher Salary? Not for Some Security Pros
In the rapidly growing cybersecurity industry, some positions don't offer a clear-cut path to a higher salary. An academic degree and years of experience, considered a promising combination in traditional industries, don't guarantee security employees a bigger paycheck.

According to new research, location has a tremendous impact on salary. Security analysts in North America report a significantly higher salary than in EMEA and APAC: More than 80% earn between $71,000 and $110,000 compared with less than 35% in EMEA and 21% in APAC earning the same.

The highest-paid position recorded was security director, with top-tier earners making $290,000 or more.

For some security roles, demonstrable skills are more valuable than academic degrees. One example would be a level-one SOC analyst tasked with triaging alerts. The same can be said of network security engineering, where a greater percentage of employees without degrees reported salaries on the higher end of the spectrum than employees with degrees. darkreading.com

The Grinch Bot That Stole Christmas

5 Security Resolutions to Prevent a Ransomware Attack in 2020