ADT Further Expands Mobile Reach with Lyft Partnership
Boca Raton, Fla., Oct. 14, 2019 – ADT, a leading security and automation provider serving residential and business customers, today announced a partnership to integrate mobile safety solutions into the Lyft platform. Extending ADT’s safety and technology to mobile applications will bring an additional layer of security to Lyft’s rideshare experience.

With ADT’s mobile safety platform, Lyft seeks to give riders and drivers more peace of mind. The pilot will focus on an ADT-powered safety feature within the Lyft app that will discreetly connect Lyft users who feel unsafe - by voice or SMS chat - with a security professional at one of ADT’s owned and operated monitoring centers. After contacting the user, or if there is no response, the ADT security professional will alert authorities as needed so they can arrive at the user's location, equipped with detailed incident information. Read more in the Press Release column below

Johnson Controls adds WaveLynx Technologies’ Ethos Multi-Tech readers to access control portfolio
Johnson Controls is introducing the Ethos line of multi-tech contactless access readers from WaveLynx Technologies. Ethos readers are equipped with a choice of credential technologies, enabling customers to choose migration paths to deploy secure credentials. swhouse.com

"'I’m Out’: PG&E Blackouts Stagger Californians"
No Power No POS - Food Spoilage - Curfews
Impacting Grocery Stores - Malls - All of Retail
California residents have come face-to-face with an uncomfortable new reality: Large swaths of the state—by itself the fifth-largest economy in the world, and home to the globe’s most technologically advanced companies—may be subject to the sort of abrupt blackouts normally associated with underdeveloped countries.

The state’s three big investor-owned utilities now have regulatory permission to cut off power to parts of their service territories during strong winds to reduce the risk of their electric lines causing wildfires,

“We are seeing the scale and scope of something that no state in the 21st century should experience,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said speaking Thursday in Mather, Calif. “What’s happened is unacceptable, and it has happened because of neglect.”

Last week, PG&E became the only U.S. utility ever to have initiated a weather-related shut-off of such size and duration, affecting nearly 750,000 homes and businesses across 34 counties. By Sunday, PG&E said it had restored power to all customers hit by the blackouts.

The economic costs are likely to be muted, at least for now. The first two days of the shut-off for PG&E’s residential and commercial customers could cost the state economy between $65 million and $2.5 billion.

If the blackouts continue on for much longer the economic toll will mount, particularly if businesses feel this will be an endemic problem.

In Morgan Hill, a small city south of San Jose, police said they were enforcing a nighttime curfew to prevent criminals from taking advantage of the power outage. wsj.com

When Will Next One Hit?
Dark Shops, Spotty Phones, Rotting Fish: Life in a Mass Blackout
I passed pharmacies, banks, a coffee shop and several office buildings on my way to the bus stop in Oakland. All dark. A Lucky supermarket was among the few with lights on. A trailer-sized, backup generator parked in its lot. A worker at the local doughnut shop greeted patrons with: “No coffee, just donuts.” With the credit card machines down, I paid for my glazed twist with a $5 bill. It’s a cash economy in the Bay Area now. bloomberg.com

One Massive Blackout Is Over, Now California Braces for the Next
California has six weeks left in the wildfire season -- a time punctuated by dry, hot weather and high winds that have for years been the fuel for deadly and devastating blazes. While both PG&E and California state officials alike acknowledged that the shutoffs that began on Wednesday could have been better orchestrated, neither questioned their need.

When they’ll go dark again is Mother Nature’s call, Johnson said. “It really is weather-dependent -- where the wind is, where the conditions are.”

Governor Gavin Newsom has blasted PG&E over the shutoffs, saying the company should have been more surgical -- and never would’ve been in this situation if it had invested in its infrastructure more heavily. He also called on state utility regulators to review PG&E’s actions. bloomberg.com

Domino’s Is Using A.I. Surveillance to Manage Store Performance
Insisted It's Not Surveillance Technology But Rather A Training Tool
The company’s ‘pizza checker’ makes sure your order is right, but also pinpoints low performing stores.

The multinational pizza chain has been rolling out its “DOM Pizza Checker” — a scanning device that looks straight out of Minority Report — to identify “bad pizzas” and stores with “poor customer outcomes” in Australia and New Zealand. This is according to a slide deck that Domino’s executives Don Meij and Nick Knight presented to shareholders in both countries this week. The deck is available on Domino’s website and was first reported on Thursday by iTnews, which perfectly described it as “the great pizza panopticon.”

The deck notes that it could be used for “franchisee and operations team alignment,” with the device being incorporated into a cash bonus system. There will be “1:1 followups for stores falling behind peers,” it adds. In the future, Domino’s wants the scanner to differentiate crust types and to “display pizza checker scores as a live feed on the makeline to empower team members.”

Domino’s insisted that DOM Pizza Checker is not a surveillance technology but rather a training tool. Its spokesperson said there is no punishment for not using the device, though the executive’s slide deck suggested it would be used to pinpoint low-performing stores. onezero.medium.com

Man Hurt in Florida's Town Center Mall Panic Sunday, but No Sign of Shooting, Police Say
Shoppers fled the Town Center mall in Boca Raton, Fla., after hearing a loud noise in the food court. Panicked shoppers fled a South Florida mall on Sunday after believing they heard gunshots, prompting police S.W.A.T. teams and federal agents to lock down the commercial center for several hours — but the authorities later said there was no evidence of a shooting.

“These things are always evolving,” Chief Alexander said, adding that a “bang” or loud noise near the food court prompted the panic. “There’s something that happened inside that mall that caused people to get concerned, a lot of people.” Some shoppers said on Twitter that they were holed up inside the mall for several hours.

A man hit his head on a door as he tried to evacuate the building, according to the police, who said the man was being treated at a local hospital. Several other people had minor injuries, the police said.

The scare happened around 3 p.m. at the Town Center at Boca Raton, an upscale shopping mall about an hour north of Miami and right off Interstate 95. It was the latest unfounded report of a shooting at a public place since mass shootings in Odessa, Tex.; Dayton, Ohio; and El Paso, where a gunman killed 22 people at a Walmart in August. nytimes.com

Amazon calls for federal regulation of facial recognition and national data protection law
Amazon refers to the guidelines it proposed for responsible use of facial recognition and new legislation early in 2019, and says national legislation is needed “that protects individual civil rights and ensures that governments are transparent in their application of the technology.”

These measures are unlikely to satisfy critics, who will point out that one of the few U.S. police forces known to use Rekognition has admitted it does not follow Amazon’s guidance. biometricupdate.com

Amazon Says Its Delivery Drones Won’t Crash Into You or Your Clotheslines.
Here’s Why
These UAVs won’t just be powered by propellers and motors, but by machine learning, Amazon chief technology officer Werner Vogels explained Thursday in a keynote presentation at World Summit A.I. in Amsterdam.

“Safety is the most important thing. We use many different sensors to ensure it doesn’t crash into anything, or that any other bad things will happen,” he says. The e-commerce giant will equip the drones with its computer vision algorithms so that when it finally gets the regulatory green-light to launch the service, the winged machines will be able to land at the correct door step without bumping into anything.

Vogels shared a number of examples of what the drone could encounter en-route: all manner of flying objects, clothes lines and power lines, and, closer to the ground, humans and their pets. Its eyes will be cameras and sensors built with a combination of stereoscopic, image segmentation and heat-mapping technologies that ensure it avoids trouble on the way to the landing zone outside your front door.

The drones can carry packages weighing up to five to seven pounds. That turns out to be convenient as more than 70% of Amazon deliveries weigh in at about that payload, he said. Delivery is expected to take no more than 30 minutes.

The company wants to corner the market on the kind of machine-learning technologies it’s developed for its drones—as well as for its Amazon Go retail format and on its shopping site. fortune.com

The Customer Facing Conundrum - Hits Lowe's & Target
Leaked documents reveal details on Target's 'modernization' plan
Store workers say has backfired spectacularly
"The journey to activate a sales culture with knowledgeable, experienced and passionate teams who are blending service and task is well underway," the Target sorting and stocking implementation guide for backroom processes for apparel and accessories says. A former salaried executive at an East Coast Target received this 54-page rollout guide in August 2018 and said it was sent to other store directors and executives. The former employee described the guide as "the bible" for how changes were to be implemented in Target stores.

Business Insider spoke with over 50 former and current Target workers, many of whom said that the modernization program has changed their stores for the worse, making their jobs unbearably stressful and, in some cases, unsafe.

Target stores are getting surprise visits from company inspectors and managers following workers' reports of unsafe backrooms.

Target confirmed some backroom and overnight shifts had been eliminated in stores throughout the country. With fewer people devoted to specific jobs in the back, many other workers said they were being forced to pick up the slack as they try to keep up with a workload they did not originally sign up for. This, on top of the changes in stocking processes, has caused problems for workers in Target stores across the country.

At least 13 workers said their backrooms became increasingly unsafe as a result of the shift changes from modernization.

"Our store leaders and team members undergo mandatory safety training every year and we invest in the technology, tools and processes that keep our stores safe and ensure we comply with all federal safety guidelines. We work quickly to investigate and remedy issues anytime we receive safety-related concerns from our team members," the company said in a statement last week. businessinsider.com

Outside of Trump Administration - Everybody Else is Giving in to China
From the NBA to Apple to Facebook
Apple Removes App That Helps Hong Kong Protesters Track the Police
Companies ranging from Marriott to United Airlines to Versace have also backtracked on perceived slights to the Chinese government in the past, such as customer surveys that suggested Taiwan was an independent nation. All the firms are balancing the enormous economic opportunity in China, with its 1.4 billion consumers, with the negative public image of capitulating to an authoritarian government. nytimes.com

Ross Opens 42 New Locations (30 Ross & 12 dd's DISCOUNTS)

Sears Continues to Struggle After Bankruptcy Sales Drops 60% - Closing 100 More Stores
 

ADT Further Expands Mobile Reach
with Lyft Partnership

Rider and Driver Safety Enhanced with Turnkey Ride Sharing Pilot

Walmart's AI-Powered Cameras Monitoring For Theft
Walmart's 1,500 Data Scientists & Hiring More in Push on AI
3 questions that guide all its AI projects
Walmart is a leader in the push to adopt artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Chief data officer Bill Groves, who directly oversees a smaller staff of 100 tech workers. Groves also said the company employs around 50,000 software engineers, though a Walmart spokesperson later said the numbers is closer to 10,000.

Those employees help support the over 100,000 different machine learning or AI-based projects the organization currently has in production. Among the applications that Walmart is currently rolling-out are AI-powered cameras to monitor for theft.

But the success rate for artificial intelligence or machine-learning projects is still just 75 percent, Groves said at the event. One way Walmart is aiming to address that is through its core three tenets that guide all the high-tech initiatives.

"If the answer is 'no' to any of these three, we'll typically put a stop to the project immediately so that way we aren't spending money that we shouldn't spend," he said.

1) Why are you doing it? Will someone pay for it? That can include the company itself, or a vendor that may purchase the application from Walmart. "If nobody will pay for, then why am I doing it?," he said. "The business has to see the value, the business has to want it."

2) Can you explain it? Key to that succeeding, however, is software engineers or data scientists being able to explain tentative or pending applications to other business units. "If I cannot explain to an executive what I'm doing, then why am I doing it," Groves said.

3) Can you implement it? The business side must be able to implement it to ultimately drive down costs or improve profits. "It's a massive challenge just due to the size and scale we have," Groves said. "Money is being thrown out the window." Initiatives must have a plan in place to go from development to production in an affordable way, and it must have buy-in from all parties involved.

While relatively basic questions, Walmart's approach to AI exemplifies just how critical cross-collaboration is for advanced tech initiative to succeed — and how quickly they can fail it there isn't broad support internally. businessinsider.com

Password Habits Remain Key Obstacle to Business’ Security
According to the the 3rd Annual Global Password Security Report, given that stolen and reused credentials are linked to 80 percent of hacking-related breaches, businesses must take more action to improve password and access security to make a big impact on risk reduction.

“Securing employee access has never been more important and unfortunately, we see businesses ignore password security altogether, or only half-heartedly attempt to address it,” securitymagazine.com

How Cybercriminals Continue to Innovate
Europol Report: Ransomware, DDoS, Business Email Compromises Are Persistent Threats

Online attack threats continue to intensify, with criminals preferring ransomware, DDoS attacks and business email compromises, warns Europol, the EU's law enforcement intelligence agency. After numerous successful disruptions by police, criminals have responded by launching increasingly complex attacks.

Europol sizes up the threat landscape and how it's likely to evolve in its latest Internet Organized Crime Threat Assessment. The annual report describes how so many types of cybercrime have become more complex (see: Darknet Disruption: 'Wall Street Market' Closed for Business).

The widespread failure to patch software vulnerabilities continues to provide opportunities for criminals, complicating law enforcement efforts, Europol warns (see: NSA Is Latest Intelligence Agency to Sound VPN Patch Alarm).

Unfortunately, criminals appear to be adapting quickly to attempts to disrupt their efforts. "One of the interesting trends that's starting to happen, and you'll see it talked about in the IOCTA report, is that criminals are aware, and to say they're running scared is wrong, but they adapt very quickly," Woodward tells Information Security Media Group. "They don't innovate unless they have to." govinfosecurity.com

Cybercrime is maturing, shifting its focus to larger and more profitable targets
Data is the key element in cybercrime, both from a crime and an investigate perspective.

These key threats demonstrate the complexity of countering cybercrime and highlight that criminals only innovate their criminal behavior when existing modi operandi have become unsuccessful or more profitable opportunities emerge.

In essence, new threats do not only arise from new technologies but often come from known vulnerabilities in existing technologies that remain unpatched for extended periods of time.

Law enforcement must therefore not only focus on the potential impact of future technological developments in cybercrime, such as artificial intelligence but also approach cybercrime in a holistic sense, including prevention, awareness and increasing cyber education and resilience.

Europol’s 6th annual Internet Organised Crime Threat Assessment (IOCTA) offers a unique law enforcement view of the emerging threats and key developments in the field of cybercrime over the last year. helpnetsecurity.com

FBI: Phishing Can Defeat Two-Factor Authentication
Human beings can be tricked. This fact is a hard-to-patch vulnerability in many systems. And that is the tl;dr version of a notice from the FBI that recently hit industry groups.

According to the Private Industry Notification, criminals are bypassing two-factor authentication with a combination of well-known techniques including social engineering and man-in-the-middle attacks.

In addition to reminding organizations of the dangers of SIM-swapping exploits, the notice points to two new hacker tools: Mureana (named for a family of eels), which automates phishing attacks, and NecroBrowser, which helps to hijack a legitimate authentication session. Together, the tools can turn a victim's browser into a credential-stealing zombie that gives no notice to the legitimate user.

The FBI recommends that companies continue to educate users on phishing techniques and, for especially high-value accounts, use a variety of different authentication methods with tokens that regularly change.

Read more here and here. darkreading.com

North America the Largest Cyber Security Market Globally
Cyber Security Market 2019 Research Methodology, Business Plans, Development Status, and Industry Size & Share Forecast to 2024
The cyber security market was valued at USD 119.61 billion in 2018, and is expected to reach USD 261.07 billion by 2024, at a CAGR of 14.15% during the forecast period (2019-2024). Cyber security is an integral part of every single organization across the world. The adoption of cyber security solutions is expected to grow with the increasing penetration of internet among the developing and developed countries. Also, the expanding wireless network for mobile devices has increased data vulnerability, making cyber security an integral part of every single organization across the world. bostonlifenews.com

Business Email Compromise - BEC Cyber Scams - Facing 20 Yrs.
Man Convicted for Laundering $3M+ in Proceeds from International Cyber Scams

Walmart debuts shrimp tracking on blockchain
 

The Retailer's View

The Value - Expectations - Impact
Long-Term LPRC Members Discuss its Role & Impact on the LP/AP Industry

Joe Coll, VP of Asset Protection Operations & Administration, Macy's
Paul Jaeckle, VP of Asset Protection, Meijer Stores & LPRC Vice Chair
Kevin Larson, Senior Manager, AP, Kroger & LPRC Vice Chair

Given the level of disruption going on in the retail industry, the increasing role of technology, the importance of brand reputation, and the impact of social media, the opioid epidemic, active shooters, and cybercrime on retail, it’s never been as important as it is today to find and develop academic solutions that solve or at least help minimize enterprise risk.

In our 5th episode, we speak with Joe Coll, Paul Jaeckle, and Kevin Larson - three tenured members of the Loss Prevention Research Council - who discuss the role and impact the group is having on the industry, as the leading academic resource in the U.S. totally dedicated to the retail LP/AP community.

Learn how the LPRC conference extends well beyond three days, providing a year-long work effort of industry collaboration, working groups, research papers, Store Labs, offender interviews, and more.
 

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Nashville, TN: Man accused of stealing thousands in items from Louis Vuitton
A man was arrested after a theft investigation that involved over $10,000 worth of stolen items on separate occasions. On August 21, an arrest affidavit states a male and female entered the Louis Vuitton store at Green Hills mall and stole $6,720 worth of merchandise. Employees apparently recognized the man and said he has committed similar thefts in the past. The affidavit states he’s known as “Breezy Brown.” After conducting a photo line-up, a store employee identified the male thief as Terence Derrell Brown. On September 20, an arrest affidavit says Brown entered the same store and stole $4,350 worth of items. Brown has officially been arrested on two counts of theft of merchandise. wkrn.com