Agilence Integrates with PAR Technology's Cloud-Based Brink POS Software
ParTech, Inc (PAR), global POS solutions provider and wholly owned subsidiary of publicly-traded PAR Technology Corporation (NYSE: PAR), added Agilence to its Brink integration ecosystem.

Agilence, Inc. develops the industry-leading data analytics and reporting platform that allows multi-unit restaurant operators to manage operational resources and revenue streams in one place. Brink customers will now be able to leverage Agilence's 20/20 Data Analytics Platform to identify profit-eroding operational issues and unlock the full power of their point-of-sale data so they can have a complete view of their business to make better decisions, faster. Read more in today's Vendor Spotlight below.


US cities ramp up security in wake of killing of Iran's top general
Attacks Were Imminent According to Sec. of State
Cities around the United States are ramping up security in the wake of an American airstrike that killed Iran's top military commander in Baghdad.

"The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stands ready to confront and combat any and all threats facing our homeland," DHS Acting Secretary Chad Wolf said in a statement. "While there are currently no specific, credible threats against our homeland, DHS continues to monitor the situation and work with our Federal, State and local partners to ensure the safety of every American."

Wolf, who said he "commend[s] the President's decisive action to protect American lives both abroad and at home," added that senior DHS leadership met Thursday night and Friday morning "to assess potential new threats" and responses to them.

The New York City Police Department -- the country's largest -- and Mayor Bill de Blasio said they are on alert for any suspicious activity.

"What we have to assume based on previous knowledge is that the Iranians would have an interest in prominent targets, well-known American locations," de Blasio said.

The Los Angeles Police Department tweeted it was also monitoring the situation closely and would respond as necessary. The nation's capital, Washington, D.C., is also on alert.

The heightened state of alert comes as Iran is warning of action for the U.S. killing of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani. abcnews.go.com

Editor's Note: Malls and Shopping Centers should also be on alert as well. When all the municipalities and agencies across the country are on alert retailers and retail properties should follow suit. That's just common sense. Obviously done quietly and professionally and without drawing any attention to the employee and consumer populations. The 'see something say something' practice should be top of mind. Please let's keep them all safe out there. Just a thought. -Gus Downing

Brand Reputation Front-and-Center Starting the New Year at McD's
McD's Clamping Down on 'Macho Guys Club Culture' After Last CEO
No More Partying & Fraternizing Culture at McD's with New CEO
New CEO Chris Kempczinski puts fresh focus on workplace decorum after concerns about predecessor's conduct.

McDonald's new CEO is determined to make changes at the top to move the company away from a culture that tolerated partying and fraternizing between some senior managers and rank-and-file employees.

Chris Kempczinski, the new chief executive, is seeking to restore a more professional culture at McDonald's after what some current and former employees described as an environment influenced by his predecessor's late-night socializing with some executives and staffers at bars and flirtations with female employees.

"There is a cultural shift here now," another person familiar with the new CEO's plans said. "Some people perceived there was this macho, guys club. That has now progressed to a more open leadership under Chris." This person and some others said Mr. Kempczinski, who was previously president of McDonald's USA, wasn't part of the executive group that did most of the late-night socializing.

McDonald's board fired its former chief, Steve Easterbrook, 52 years old, in November after he acknowledged having a consensual relationship with an unnamed company staffer. Mr. Easterbrook apologized for conduct that he said violated company values and rules barring employees from dating direct or indirect reports.

Many U.S. companies are rethinking their stance on personal relationships in the workplace and reviewing efforts to combat harassment.

McDonald's employees have fraternized at headquarters and at the burger giant's frequent conventions and meetings for decades. Many of the thousands of employees, franchisees and vendors who have attended those events often drank heavily and socialized late into the night-sometimes with senior McDonald's executives participating and sometimes not, according to many current and former employees.

As CEO, Mr. Easterbrook developed a reputation for flirting with female employees, according to some former and current employees. "There were a couple of women who talked to me about his flirting. It was enough for them to feel uncomfortable," A formal complaint triggered an investigation in October, which resulted in the board voting on Oct. 31 to terminate Mr. Easterbrook because of a consensual relationship. wsj.com

Scan and Go & Fraudulent Attacks to Grow Exponentially in 2020
Two of CSA's Three 2020 Predictions Have Everything to do with LP
What will change in 2020 is retailers' response to cyberfraud
Checkout is so 2019 - 2019 saw numerous rollouts of "frictionless" in-store experiences where customers scan and bag products, tap to pay, and then instantly confirm checkout with some type of mobile code verification. While this type of "scan and go" shopping offers much more convenience than waiting in line at the traditional checkout queue, more retailers in 2020 are going to ditch checkout entirely.

Securing customer trust - During 2019, the sheer volume of retail fraud attempts and cost of fraud exploded. There is no reason to think the frequency of and expenses resulting from fraudulent attacks on retail will not continue growing exponentially in 2020.

Criminals have a plethora of access points to gain unauthorized entry into retail networks and steal customer personal and financial data. What will change in 2020 is retailers' response to cyberfraud. The industry will finally realize continuing with the status quo and crossing your fingers that the next big breach happens to your main competitor isn't enough.

Look for mainstream adoption of security solutions and techniques such as using artificial intelligence to detect unusual customer behavior and/or network activity, biometric authentication, solutions that track code added to e-commerce sites in real time, in-depth security collaboration with third-party partners who have network access, and applications designed to detect intrusions after breaches occur. chainstoreage.com

Forbes Article on Retail Checkout Will Undergo Massive Changes Soon
Face Identity - Technology's Resolution to Checkouts Disappearing
Zelazny, who is an expert in biometrics and identity, points out that with every change in retail checkout technology there is increased risk. Every payment technology innovation going back to the creation of the credit card has had its own dark side including fraudsters, data breaches and sales of stolen data.

Zelazny observes that risks of fraud can get resolved with greater use of facial identity as a checkout technology. She explains that fraud risk is one thing when you're a convenience store operator and the most you can lose is typically a sandwich and drink. But when the stakes get higher, as they do for department stores and other high-ticket retailers, using new technology carries big risks and facial identity can solve that.

Like the mobile wallet that needs other features to spur adoption, Zelazny believes facial identity will eventually appeal to consumers because it can make shopping much easier. And it's not just the checkout factor -facial recognition allows seamless integration of benefits and loyalty programs into the payment systems - no more remembering to bring your card, or even your mobile device with you, your face lets them know what discounts are being stored for you. forbes.com
 

1st of Their Kind Safety Studies - Reports
Warehouse Robots Impact Serious Injuries

Serious Injuries Nearly Quadrupled After Robots
Studies Find Correlation Between Robots & Safety Problems
'As robots take over warehousing, workers pushed to adapt'
Doing your job side-by-side with robots isn't easy. According to their makers, the machines should take on the most mundane and physically strenuous tasks. In reality, they're also creating new forms of stress and strain in the form of injuries and the unease of working in close quarters with mobile half-ton devices that direct themselves.

Amazon now has more than 200,000 robotic vehicles it calls "drives" that are moving goods through its delivery-fulfillment centers around the U.S. That's double the number it had last year and up from 15,000 units in 2014. Its rivals have taken notice, and many are adding their own robots in a race to speed up productivity and bring down costs.

But while fears that robots will replace human workers haven't come to fruition, there are growing concerns that keeping up with the pace of the latest artificial intelligence technology is taking a toll on human workers' health, safety and morale.

It's not that workers aren't getting trained on how to work with robots safely. "The problem is it becomes very difficult to do so when the productivity standards are set so high," she said.

Tye Brady, Amazon Robotics' chief technologist, said worker safety remains the top priority and ergonomic design is engineered into the systems at the beginning of the design stage. Gutelius, the University of Illinois researcher, said that the aspiration for symphonic human-machine operations is not always working out in practice.

Gutelius co-authored a report published this fall that found new warehouse technology could contribute to wage stagnation, higher turnover and poorer quality work experiences because of the way AI software can monitor and micro-manage workers' behaviors.

A recent journalistic investigation of injury rates at Amazon warehouses from The Center for Investigative Reporting's Reveal found that robotic warehouses reported more injuries than those without.

Reveal looked at records from 28 Amazon warehouses in 16 states and found that the overall rate of serious injuries was more than double the warehousing industry average. Amazon has countered it's misleading to compare its rate with rivals because of the company's "aggressive stance on recording injuries no matter how big or small."

The Reveal report also found a correlation between robots and safety problems, such as in Tracy, California, where the serious injury rate nearly quadrupled in the four years after robots were introduced. apnews.com
 

Louis Vuitton to close Hong Kong luxury store hit by violent protests
Does It Have Domino Effect?
Retail sales have also plummeted, with brands such as Moncler, Gucci and Salvatore Ferragamo reporting sales declines of up to 45 per cent in Hong Kong during the third quarter that ended on September 30. LVMH reported a 25 per cent decline in its Hong Kong sales in the same period.

As a minority of protesters have turned more violent and anti-China sentiment has increased - with Mandarin Chinese speakers physically attacked and China-linked businesses repeatedly vandalized - Chinese visitors have been shunning Hong Kong. With Chinese tourists down 56%.

It is too early to say whether the decision by the largest luxury brand in the world to close a prime Hong Kong store will have a domino effect, triggering more prominent store closures in the city's luxury retail sector in 2020. scmp.com

Welcome to 2020: Likely To Be Another Challenging Year for Retail
More Closures & Bankruptcies
The early read on the holiday season has been positive even with the abbreviated shopping calendar, with Bloomberg reporting that Super Saturday (December 21, the last Saturday before Christmas) was the biggest shopping day in US history, despite a 9.7% year over year decline in store traffic, according to Sensormatic Solutions ShopperTrak.

The shortened calendar likely drove more consumers to shop online. Mastercard SpendingPulse reported that total US retail sales from November 1 through Christmas Eve increased 3.4% year over year, while online sales jumped 18.8% and in-store sales grew a paltry 1.2%. Digital accounted for a record 14.6% share of total sales.

Retailers will soon begin taking stock of holiday performance and finalizing plans for 2020. We expect a new crop of store-closure announcements as companies assess holiday performance and make tough decisions about leases and return on investment for specific store locations. And with several large retailers facing steep financial challenges, we may see further bankruptcy announcements.

Consumers want e-commerce, buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS) services and speedy free delivery, and retailers are working to meet these expectations. With established store footprints digital natives could never hope to match, traditional retailers that can successfully reinvent themselves as multichannel retailers stand to prosper amid the ongoing challenges. coresight.com

Retailers Had a Happy Holiday Season - Now Comes the Hangover
Returns Up 20% Over 2018
Holiday spending on apparel rose 1 percent from a year earlier, though online sales jumped 17 percent, according to Mastercard's SpendingPulse survey

Returns of holiday gifts could reach as high as $95 billion, which would be a 20 percent rise over 2018, according to B-Stock Solutions

Nordstrom and Kohl's are among the retailers accepting returns from some rivals as a way to drive store traffic

The return surge is a boon for resale sites, which can see a spike in traffic as users attempt to earn some cash from their unwanted gifts. businessoffashion.com

US Conflict With Iran Sparks Cybersecurity Concerns
Homeland Security Reminds CISOs to Protect Critical Systems
After an Iranian general was killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad late Thursday night, security experts and the Department of Homeland Security warned of possible retaliatory cyber strikes from Iran that could target critical infrastructure, government agencies as well as private businesses. govinfosecurity.com
 

Ongoing Targeted Attacks on POS Systems

VISA Warns of Ongoing Cyber Attacks on Gas Pump PoS Systems
Accessing Merchants Internal Networks - Not Skimming
The point-of-sale (POS) systems of North American fuel dispenser merchants are under an increased and ongoing threat of being targeted by an attack coordinated by cybercrime groups according to a security alert published by VISA.

Three attacks that targeted organizations in this type of attack with the end goal of scraping payment card data were observed during the summer of 2019, according to the Visa Payment Fraud Disruption (PFD).

This alert follows a previous warning from November that also mentions such merchants being an increasingly attractive target for threat groups "due to the lack of secure acceptance technology, (e.g. EMV Chip, Point-to-Point Encryption, Tokenization, etc.) and non-compliance with PCI DSS."

Based on the recent attacks that compromised POS systems at fuel dispenser merchants detected by PFD, threat groups have them on the short list of attractive targets.

"It is important to note that this attack vector differs significantly from skimming at fuel pumps, as the targeting of POS systems requires the threat actors to access the merchant's internal network, and takes more technical prowess than skimming attacks," VISA PFD says. bleepingcomputer.com

Read Full Visa Payment Fraud Disruption Report
 

CCPA Is Here - But Many Aren't Compliant
Don't be Fooled by July Date - Fines Could be Retroactive
For months, survey data has shown that very few US businesses are ready to comply with the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA). With the legislation having kicked in on January 1, at least half of US companies may still be struggling to comply.

About half of US security professionals surveyed by data security software company Egress in October 2019 said their firms were already compliant with CCPA or would be by the end of the year.

At least half of respondents said they had taken steps like improving their use of existing security technologies, investing in new technologies and improving their data handling practices.

"Like we saw with GDPR, CCPA compliance is a journey that most companies won't be able to complete before the January 1, 2020, deadline," said Lauren Fisher, principal analyst at eMarketer. "Even those who feel ready and say they're compliant will likely have to make modifications and changes as the year progresses and the true nature of the regulation becomes clearer. Companies need to look at compliance as an ongoing process and not a static checklist."

CCPA compliance can be a costly endeavor for companies. According to August 2019 data from consent solutions provider PossibleNOW, 35% of US businesses polled said that they won't be CCPA compliant by January 1, 2020, because they feel it's too expensive to attain compliance. emarketer.com
 

2020 Cybersecurity Trends: Expect Things to Get Weird
Hiding - Targeting Info Not Money - Ad Systems - 3rd Party Vendors
If you're going to fight the threats that the internet has to offer in 2020, you're going to have to get a little more creative. That's because attackers are getting more clever and trying some weird tactics.

According to security experts at firms such as Trend Micro and Avast, bad actors are trying unconventional things to stay a step ahead of IT staffs.

Trend Micro's director of technology marketing, Myla Pilao, said that attackers are increasingly targeting areas that they might have previously avoided, including malware on the Linux platform and malware that aims to steal information rather than money. She also says that attackers will become harder to detect as they use more nontraditional methods to distribute or spread malware.

"These are the ones that probably would stay in our network, would stay in our devices, for a long time unattended," Pilao told the outlet. "They would have a nontraditional way to evade detection. They will probably be using more blacklisting techniques. They might be doing more in the evasion techniques."

Additionally, malware is increasingly moving away from trying to infiltrate the App Store and instead toward trying to game the ad systems many free apps use.

Another nontraditional method that experts expect to see, according to MediaPost, is the rise of less-technical cyberattacks that rely on social engineering and attempt to compromise vendors that organizations rely on. associationsnow.com

Organizations May 'Uncloud' Over Security, Budgetary Concerns
With Gartner forecasting cloud revenue to hit $370 billion by 2023, and Microsoft highlighting how cloud has become a core element in enterprise IT, cloud's momentum looks unstoppable. But cloud customers are bumping up against some harder realities; according to our most recent cloud data security report, 48% of organizations that store sensitive data in the cloud would consider moving that data back on premises. It's a costly and time-consuming proposition, yet organizations are thinking about it. Why?

In most cases, organizations uncloud because they face unexpected issues. Initially the plurality of organizations migrated to the cloud to cut costs (31%) and ensure availability for remote workers (26%). However, the survey results show that organizations are ready to uncloud due to their inability to ensure the desired level of protection (24%).

About one third of the organizations would uncloud because they didn't achieve the initial goals of cloud migration. Among those who moved their data to the cloud to cut costs, 29% are ready to uncloud due to unexpected high costs. Among those who moved data to the cloud for security reasons, 27% would uncloud due to considerable security concerns.

Deep understanding of your data will also help you reduce cloud costs, as well as manage data more effectively by carefully choosing which data to migrate, which to leave on premises, and which to delete or destroy. darkreading.com
 

Senior Jobs

Dir. Information Security for Focus Brands in Atlanta, GA
The Director, Information Security is responsible for establishing, implementing, monitoring and enforcing a corporate-wide information security management program to help ensure that information assets are protected.

As a leading developer of iconic food-service brands around the globe. We are the franchisor and operator of over 4,500 ice cream shops, bakeries, restaurants, and cafés in the United States, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and 60 foreign countries under the brand names Carvel®, Cinnabon®, Schlotzsky's®, Moe's Southwest Grill®, Auntie Anne's®, McAlister's Deli®, and Seattle's Best Coffee® on certain military bases and in certain international markets. focusbrands.com

3rd Party Provided: Dir. Corporate Security for Recorded Future in Boston
Reporting to the Chief Security Officer, this position is responsible for establishing and maintaining the information security program across the enterprise to ensure information assets and associated technology, applications, systems infrastructure, and processes are adequately protected. As the Director of Corporate Security, you will play a crucial role in setting the strategy and technical direction to ensure that our data and applications throughout the SAAS & employee environments remain secure. greenhouse.io

With more than 1 billion intelligence cards at your fingertips, we give security teams the information they need to exponentially amplify the power of their security programs. Whether you're in a SOC, managing a vulnerability management team, or responding to incidents, we provide critical data that amplifies and accelerates your work. recordedfuture.com
 

AI Explosion Brewing in the Cloud for 2020

New and improved FTC data security orders:
Better guidance for companies, better protection for consumers

"This is organized fraud on a massive scale"
Counterfeit goods swell as online shopping booms
Online scams are as old as the internet, but consumer fraud experts say sketchy offers have snowballed in the rush to cash in on holiday shoppers. And as consumers become more comfortable buying from overseas merchants, no-name Instagram accounts and on their phones - where it can be trickier to discern whether a site is legitimate - it all adds up to diminishing oversight and more opportunities for fraud.

At Overland Sheepskin, a family-run business in Fairfield, Iowa, executives say they have been fighting an uphill battle against websites that use its photos to misrepresent themselves as vendors. Overland shared a spreadsheet of 753 such sites it has identified since early November and says dozens more crop up daily, highlighting both an explosive growth in new types of consumer deception and the fact that retailers and shoppers have little recourse.

"This is organized fraud on a massive scale," said Gabriel Openshaw, Overland's vice president of e-commerce. "These sites are stealing our images and sending customers horrendous-looking knockoffs - or nothing at all - in exchange for their money."

Most of those sites - 90 percent, according to Openshaw - are hosted by Shopify, a leading web platform that backs more than 1 million merchants.

In recent weeks, lawyers and executives at Overland say they have reported hundreds of sites to Shopify and have sent multiple notices to the company's legal team, according to documents Overland shared with The Post. Shopify has removed some of the offending images and sites; others, including KeliSexin, remain active even after Openshaw and his team have flagged them nearly a dozen times. columbian.com

Payments Security Program Manager for eBay in San Jose, CA

Amazon plans new 1M-sq.-ft. hub for large items in Deltona, FL - 500 new jobs

Report: Amazon could open stores in Germany