THE FUTURE IS NOW continued from page 45 continued from page 45 getting more difficult for retailers to avoid being swept into polarizing political debates. After El Paso, for example, CVS Health and Walgreens asked customers to stop openly carrying firearms in stores, and Walmart announced an end to select ammunition sales. Some retailers may wish to avoid taking positions on culturally divisive issues, but others may make a point of doing so to connect with their customers. Picking sides on hot button issues—or even appearing to pick sides—makes retailers more likely targets of protest groups and can spur individuals to conduct politically motivated cyber attacks. These attacks are particularly difficult to defend against because the aim isn’t theft but to cause headaches and embarrassment. In addition to technical safeguards, corporate security teams should consider proactive monitoring for what is being said about them online. Collaboration for LP must be the new normal. The effectiveness of LP—as both a department and an industry—will increasingly depend on engaging and cooperating with others. IT and online divisions are obvious examples but just some of many cross-functional partners with which LP will need to engage to provide value to retail enterprises, say industry leaders. In the latest NRF Protect survey, nearly nine in ten respondents said there is increasingly overlap between LP and cyber, but many retailers haven’t aligned them yet. Delivery wars are only just beginning. Kroger piloted a thirty-minute delivery service called Kroger Rush at two stores near its Cincinnati headquarters. Macy’s plans to offer free same- day delivery. Walgreens teamed up with Google’s Wing Aviation to test drone delivery in a small town in Virginia. All are examples of the growing effort by stores to compete with online sellers. As the battle continues, experts say it’s important for loss prevention to be part of planning as retailers innovate, whether they embrace
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ship from store, pick up in store, and into futuristic scenarios like autonomous delivery. Social engineering scams will continue to grow in sophistication. In the sidebar on page 44, we note how one ORC investigator is fighting external scams targeting employees in which individuals pose as a company manager or other higher-ups to facilitate fraud. These scams are fueled by greater access to information—and posing as someone else is poised to get even easier. The Washington Post recently reported that a French insurance company said one of its clients was victimized by thieves who used artificial-intelligence-driven voice-mimicking software to imitate a company executive’s speech and scam a managing director into transferring $240,000 into their bank account. The employee said he thought the request was odd but that the voice was so accurate he felt he had to comply. “This is a technology that would have sounded exotic in the extreme ten years ago, now being well within the range of any lay criminal who’s got creativity to spare,” Andrew Grotto of Stanford University’s Cyber Policy Center, told the Post. Retail organizations need to improve natural disaster preparedness to limit business disruption. In 2018, the US experienced $14 billion-plus natural disasters, which caused approximately $90.9 billion in losses, according to the latest US Household Disaster Giving report. Once-a-century type storms now seem to happen all the time, and climate experts generally agree that the trend will persist. Disruption from civil unrest and political instability also seems poised to increase, warn experts in risk management. In today’s evolving retail environment, effectively mitigating the business impact from these events can make the difference between winning and losing in the global marketplace. LP’s expertise is vital to enabling businesses to manage both predictable and catastrophic challenges and forge greater resiliency.
NOVEMBER–DECEMBER 2019
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most important relationships are with operations and online and cyber—and IT in general,” he said. “You have to be totally connected to the direction of the company from an IT and operational point of view.” D’Onofrio also suggests looking outside one’s own operations. “Finding and engaging with mentors, who have
“For LP to get to the higher level they need to get to, they need to become more data oriented in their approaches than they are, and able to demonstrate concrete results, and use technologies that help consumers buy more, not less. They should be focused on even more data and using video and data analytics and emerging solutions to help LP take security to next level.” – Tony D’Onofrio, TD Insights been down the road of combining offline and online, is important to understand the critical components of that journey.” Even more broadly, D’Onofrio says LP needs to understand broad developments impacting retail, like those highlighted in the sidebar on industry trends. “To evolve LP in the right way, you need to get educated about where the rest of the retail world is going,” he said.
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