LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 60 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

Who influences us most on selecting goods or services? What are the top reasons for people shopping in Brick and Mortar? In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including the New Update on the Coronavirus Origin, an FBI Report Identifies Most Used Weapons for Homicides, European Nuclear Weapon Locations Shared on Education Website, and New Upgrades in Energy Grid Cyber Security are Occurring. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 60 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi everyone, welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we aim to explore the science of crime and the practical application of this science for loss prevention and asset protection practitioners, as well as other professionals. We would like to thank Bosch for making this episode possible. Be a leader in loss prevention by implementing integrated solutions that enhance safety, reduce shrink, and help to improve merchandising, operations, and customer service. operations, and customer service. Bosch Integrated Security and Communications Solutions spans zones one through four in the LPRC's zones of influence, while enriching the customer experience and delivering valuable data to help increase retail profitability. Learn more by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science, the podcast. This is the latest in our weekly update series, joined by our producer, Diego Rodriguez, my co-partners in crime here, if you will, Tony D'Onofrio and Tom Meehan. And we're

going to talk a little bit about what's going on around the world. Coming here out of our, in the United States, our Memorial Day weekend, we're here on a Tuesday morning at 8.30 a.m. And just a little bit about the vaccines and the pandemic as we're trying to deal nationally and internationally with safety and commerce and what's up there. variants, combinations of variants going on, and that's creating a lot of turbulence and issues and concerns by, as we all know, local and state and federal or national governments. China's now reporting a new strain or variant over there, a combination of UK and India and so on. And so we see more of these going on as they do real time genomic analysis on the strains that they're seeing out there across the world and within different countries. But it's creating an issue. I think on the genesis, we're intel and anecdote were indicating the sources of the virus were that there's data supporting different scenarios. The area where the bats are is quite a distance from Wuhan. But there was not a lot of evidently early, any reporting of any transmission or infection

between where the bat population is in the Wuhan area. But yet the breakout came out of Wuhan. And then coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, that's where the world's leading viral research areas is, is in Wuhan, China, and the leading, I understand, coronavirus research facility in the world is in Wuhan, as we all know, and that there could have been escape, most likely unintentional, since this is not uncommon, evidently, according to these sources we hear and read. But by and large, the media wasn't reporting or wasn't taking seriously those reports or negatively reporting them. Now, maybe there's further evidence or there's a re-examination of the evidence that the prior administration was putting out there.

And I saw today that the United Kingdom, the UK intelligence community is now publicly saying that they do have some evidence, but I don't know that anybody's got anything even close to conclusive as to the origin of the transmission from animal to human of this particular COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2 virus. So all of us, of course, are staying tuned. I think the main reason that it's not just the intrigue and interest in the back and forth and so on of this, but rather what are the implications for getting ahead of these types of pandemics, of course, in the future so that we don't have to keep going through the type of situation. So stay tuned on that. Some pretty, some pretty good news on the vaccination front. And, you know, I've listened a lot and read a lot around the role of vaccines and human health and why the lifespan has continued to grow in most countries and so on.

The role that vaccines play is incredibly large in that. And so the same here, and that the idea that these mRNA vaccines that are the Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech versions, for example, while the technologies, as we've talked about before, is still 15, 20, maybe 30 years old, and rigorously tested in multiple phase one, two, and three trials around the world. And now, of, you know, a half a billion plus are fully vaccinated with it. So around the world looks like so that they are, it's one of the most safe, it's probably the safest vaccine or one of them in history because it doesn't actually contain any type of virus in it. And it doesn't go inside of anybody's DNA or their cells. So we'll have to stay tuned on how all that rolls. But globally, it looks like we're just about at 2 billion people have received at least one dose,

if it's a two dose, which is pretty incredible. 440 plus million fully vaccinated around the world. The United States making incredible progress with 300 million people, or their doses have been put out there, let's put it that way, with at least 135, 45 million Americans, overwhelmingly adults, of course, that have now been fully vaccinated. And again, the population is somewhere between 315, 330 million. And again, overwhelmingly, the most vulnerable, if you will, have been vaccinated, so fully vaccinated and for quite a while. And we know, again, that all the major vaccine producers that have emergency use authorizations or full approval have been working on follow-up boosters in different forms should that be required or at least be suggested those again that are standalone those that are could be in combined combined with multiple uh flu vaccine um strain uh versions you know trivalent quadrivalent so forth

so it could be an easy annual for those that don't want to be home or be terribly ill from any of these viruses. If yours is covered, the strains are covered. So, but pretty exciting. Malta reports over 70% of their adults have received the first dose. So again, a small island, but it'll be very interesting to follow. Their infection rates continue to drop there almost to nothing. And so it's a good test of a fairly controlled environment to see in a natural way the high efficacy and high safety profiles of these current vaccines. There are still 77 and they're continuing to emerge vaccine candidates in preclinical phase, 92 vaccine candidates in human clinical trials, one, two, or three trials. 51 are recorded right now in phase one, 36 different vaccine candidates that are being tested in human trials phase two, and 28 right now are registered in phase three trials. Again, seven vaccines have emergency use authorization.

These include the Pfizer and Moderna, for example, or AstraZeneca or J&J, Janssen. And then eight around the world do have official approval. We know Pfizer at least has filed for official. Not sure of the status on others. approval. We know Pfizer at least has filed for official. Not sure of the status on others. So stand by a wave of more vaccine candidates are continue to come out again with different technologies and use profiles and, you know, different types of rather than injection, there's different types of ways with pills and patches and nasal mists and things like that, and patches and nasal mists and things like that, ways to apply it.

So, you know, good news on that front. We saw in the therapy front more and more that are continuing to go through preclinical and phase one, two, and three human or clinical trials. Israel just came out with a preliminary, kind of a phase one, 10 subjects with this, where they have activated a natural substance in the human in us. And 10 of 10 with very, very serious lung ailments from COVID, pneumonia and so on, that could have been fatal, that within one day of the application of the therapy, within one day of the application of the therapy they were released from the hospital so we'll see no because it's so natural in the way that they've activated this therapy sounds very very promising on top of so many others because again some can't take a vaccine and others uh may take it but they it escapes because again, they're maybe in that 5, 10, 15% that the

vaccine just didn't cover in that case. So good news on those fronts, still crazy on the travel front. As we talked about before LPRC, there's a group of European, particularly led by the UK that want LPRC there. We've had a series of calls. Tony can talk about it later if you'd like now as we go forward anyway. And so we're in heavy planning for a UK, a London area event and a series of meetings and so forth around LPRC for July timeframe. But with the travel restrictions, quarantine, and things like that, it's going to make it very, very difficult. Today being Tuesday, we've got our annual LPRC Violent Crime Summit going on. Today at 9, of course, when you hear this, it'll have been long gone, but it will be recorded so we can learn more details there.

So I'm going to turn it over to Tony D'Onofrio. And Tony, if you could take it away. Thank you very much, Reid, and a pleasure to be with you today. I am going to go around the world and I'm going to start actually with who do we trust when we go shopping for advice? And this is actually some new research that was published in Infographic Journal. So how often do we ask friends for advice in terms of new products and services? That percentage is actually pretty high. It's 49% of the time.

What do we tend to ask for advice more frequently, products or services? I kind of guessed services, and I was correct. Actually, 68% of us ask for advice on services from friends and 32 percent uh in terms of products do we trust a celebrity or an expert who we've never met or do we trust a friend for advice was one of the questions what 85 percent listen to friends 15 percent listen to a celebrity or expert they've never met so So it's a very low percentage, which tells you all this social media, what does it really get you?

How likely is it for us to buy online if the product or service was reviewed by a friend? So a friend actually provided review. And this one was surprising. 71% of us would buy that product if it was very likely or likely recommended by a friend, and they actually reviewed it online. And the top five categories that people want advice from are electronics and household appliances, health and beauty products, cars and transportation, food and drinks, and medical and personal care.

So that's interesting in terms of who do we trust when we go shopping. Switching to a more somber topic, which weapons are most commonly used in the United States for homicide? So the FBI recently released a study that analyzed 13,922 homicides from 2019. And basically 74% of all those homicides were with firearms. Nearly 46% were handguns. 24% were some type of unknown firearm. Shotguns were a small 1.4%. Rifles, 3%.

After firearms, it was knife and cutting instruments at 11%. And just over 11% used some other weapons. And then finally, 4% used their hands and feet. So it gives you an idea how people, homicides take place in the United States. Switching to a lighter topic, there was again a new study that was just published in Chain Storage in terms of the resilience of brick and mortar stores and how much do we like brick and mortar stores. This was a YouGov study that was published in Chain Storage. And it basically said that brick and mortar continues to be the go-to method for 78% for purchasing everyday essential items, such food and drinks, toiletries, and more.

Conversely, online retail channels are the preferred channel for discretionary items such as shoes, clothing, and electronics. The percentage for these online categories is 72%. The study found, and these are important for folks that have physical stores, the top reasons for shopping in brick and mortar stores include physically experiencing the product, 62%, the ability to try on things 53 percent and this one was interesting speed of purchase 45 percent additional findings were that globally

women have much stronger online retail purchase behavior versus men for a variety of essential and discretionary product categories. Importantly, the biggest differences show up among the most unpenetrated categories online, which are personal care, clothing, and cosmetics, 41% for females versus 21% of males. Delivery charges and the inability to physically experience products ranked highest in terms of online purchasing barriers at 46%. While we see convenience as a benefit for limiting trips to the store, there are times that delivery times take too long and we tend to then focus on other ways to actually go shopping. And finally, the last topic that I want to cover today is what's happening with RFID. I

haven't talked about this topic and where are we in terms of RFID and actually very pleasant, surprising seeing this latest research from Accenture. North America now leads the world in RFID adoption, which in 2020 was an amazing 93%. Adoption in North America is broken down with 7% piloting, 37% in the middle of implementation, and 47% fully deployed. Asia Pacific adoption is at 77% with 6% piloting, 25% implementing and 47% in full adoption. Europe RFID adoption is also at 77% with 8% piloting, 37% implementing and 32% in full adoption.

So as you can see, full deployment are really much heavier in both North America and Asia, lighter in Europe. Interesting for North America, full adoption in 2018 was at 28%, and it jumped to 47% of retailers having deployed in 2020. During the pandemic, retailers across geographies have used RFID to enhance omni-channel operations. In the past two years, the number of omni-channel capabilities that retailers offer have increased significantly, with 66% of retail adopters and piloters now offering five or more of the services that I've been talking about, including buy online, pick up and store, ship from store, ship to store, reserve and store, mobile app purchasing, mobile app purchasing and delivered to home compared to just 39% of non-RFID adopters and 22% of adopters and piloters in 2018.

Due to the higher adoption, expanded use cases, and increased omnichannel labeling, the return on investment is also getting better. Retailers that are fully adopted RFID are reporting more than 10% ROI compared to 9.2% in 2018. When retailers layer the use cases specifically there were those enabled or more omni-channel they are seeing 20% higher ROI. The research also showed a link between RFID maturity in adoption and the level of the return on investment. So in North America and the Asia Pacific, which again had the higher adoption rates, the return on investment was an amazing 17 to 22% higher ROI compared to Europe, where it's not as mature.

And then finally, the study also found that retailers that have engaged with suppliers on source tagging are seeing a higher ROI, 16% higher than those that have not. Full adopters have RFID, have all moved to source tagging and overall 45% of retailers say they are engaging with their suppliers on source tagging. What's next for RFID? For apparel they're moving on to blockchain, they're moving on to supply chain and analytics, they're moving to using RFID for self-checkup and they're moving to improving engagement with smarter technology. For hotline, it's again, blockchain leads. It's also focusing on omni-channel and interesting grocers are jumping in much more aggressively.

45% are thinking about using RFID for reducing stockouts, 36% for improving customer engagement with smarter technology. And RFID did have an impact during the pandemic, with 46% of respondents indicating that they focused on it much more aggressively in recent months, and an additional 26% indicating it is currently under consideration because of the pandemic. RFID interest is emerging across segments. We're now 56% of grocers now focusing on the technology. So what this tells you that RFID is here to stay and it's going to continue to accelerate. So that's interesting to me. And again, this is another one of those technology where we should engage the LPRC

for both those green and red shop for to see how to optimize that technology to science-based research. And with that, let me turn it over to Tom. Well, thank you, Tony. That was some great information. Let me just do a quick recap on the Colonial Pipeline attack. I know I spoke about this a couple of times, a couple of weeks in a row. Although the gas prices have increased dramatically throughout the U.S. It isn't directly correlated to the attack. The attack took place and basically took down the Colonial Pipeline, which supplies about half of

the gasoline and diesel fuel to the East Coast for about five days. And it was a ransomware attack that $4.4 million basically was paid on a rant back to the folks that took it over. There's one thing that really occurred, which is a good news here, is the White House and the Biden administration launched a 100-day plan to upgrade the power grid cybersecurity through a series of voluntary initiatives. Basically, what they did is they went out and created a framework for public and private partnership around emerging threats and security vulnerabilities. So several high-profile cyber attacks have occurred recently, and this really prompted the White House and the administration to take the approach of, as opposed to forced legislation, this kind of private partnership working together. And what we expect is outdated grid technology to decrease. There is still a tremendous amount of utility within the United States that is extremely outdated.

And it is partially due to the fact that a lot of these systems were written in cobalt and there is a lack of cobalt programmers. So there are a lot of folks that are retirement age that would have been writing this language. So this is, you know, that mainframe green screen piece. So there is a huge initiative here to reduce those vulnerabilities and potentially helps stem off an attack in the future. Well, I'd like to point out that this was a ransomware attack. future. Well, I'd like to point out that this was a ransomware attack. So a lot of these vulnerabilities really don't have necessarily the same correlation to a ransomware attack, where a ransomware attack generally has a human element in it. But nevertheless, there is still

a huge exposure for us in the United States within the utility piece. So the U.S. federal government is going to help really drive an education and awareness program as well as best demonstrated practices. And there is some talk about kind of a threat assessment tool that'll be provided. So more to come on that. This is a good example of what was an unfortunate event turned out to turn into something that needed to happen. And switching gears, and this just talks about kind of the – this is a little bit off topic for what we normally speak about, but this kind of just talks about the importance of securing your digital information.

So nuclear flashcards, so there is what you'll – if you're reading anything around cybersecurity, so there are U.S. secrets exposed on a learning app. So the United States government and actually some allied nations have training related to fighter jets. In Europe, there was an educational website that created flashcards, and it actually exposed the exact location of top-secret nuclear weapons and security protocols. So when we think about the listeners of this podcast and how we're hyper-digitized, right? Today we're digitizing every document, everything we have, and we're also consistently trying to train people the importance of safeguarding that information. So when you think about this level of detail, there was actually a learning app with some information that was readily available on the web. It was digitized.

And for all intents and purposes, it was a mistake, right, that led to this. And for all intents and purposes, it was a mistake, right, that led to this. So just a really good stark reminder to make sure that we are staying on top of all the things that we need to when it comes to digitization and the evolution of digitization. It's really a wild kind of thought process to go through. And then just really wanted to talk about two other things in the cybersecurity space. Actually, one is we continue to see ransomware that's specifically designed to attack unpatched Microsoft Exchange servers.

In today's day and age, there aren't as many physical Exchange servers. There's a lot of cloud-based things, but there's still roughly about 17,000 that are out and about that are not patched. And there's ransomware specifically targeting this right now. It is a major challenge or a major concern about Microsoft Exchange. So simple rule here is if you have software or hardware out there that you can patch it, and this is both personal and professional. When you see that update for your iPhone or your Android smartphone or your desktop computer, it's one of the quickest, easiest ways to protect yourself

against known vulnerabilities. And I talk about it all of the time. And I just can't stress enough the importance of upgrading. And then lastly, but certainly not least, just an update on the FusionNet. If you don't know what the FusionNet is, it's the Loss Prevention Research Council's way to collaborate and share information related to events that are occurring throughout the United States and throughout the world, whether it be civil disturbance, weather events, or any other event that could impact it. If you want to find out more about it, please contact us. We continue to see information about pockets of civil disturbance throughout the United States. There's a weekly call that I would invite anybody who's listening to the podcast to come to. You can reach out to myself, Reid, Corey Lowe, or Tony, or anybody at the Law Sprint Research Council to find out more. But if you're not involved in the FusionNet and you're in a capacity that has to do with threat assessment or active intelligence, I'd highly recommend it.

And with that, I'll turn it back over to Reid. Sounds good. So thank you so much, Tom and Tony, for a lot of great information today. Thank you so much, Tom and Tony, for a lot of great information today. And I want to, again, put out there to everybody, you know, stay safe, stay connected. With the Violent Crimes Summit, by the way, you know, the heavy coverage on active assailant, active killer shooter scenarios, training, LPRC is working away with some outside entities of different types to work on some simulation, tabletop, and some other deep dives into this horrific but all too real topic. And I think many of us saw that this weekend, federal and state and local agencies in Texas arrested a young man who was evidently planning an active

killer scenario at a local Walmart. And again, these things are so mixed and unclear. He had Saudi Middle Eastern propaganda and material as well as white supremacist type material and so on. But the idea is that the agencies were able to get tip-offs to leverage postings and things like this, intel sources, and make a very sound arrest to save lives. So I think, as we all know, we want to get left a bang, get ahead of these horrific events as much as possible. That's where we're working with others to do the same to support you all out there. So stay safe, stay in touch.

Thank you, Diego Rodriguez, our producer from LPRC, lpresearch.org. We're signing off. Thanks for listening to the Crime Science Podcast presented by the Loss Prevention Research Council and sponsored by Bosch Security. If you enjoyed today's episode, you can find more crime science episodes and valuable information at lpresearch.org. The content provided in the Crime Science Podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for legal, financial, or other advice. Views expressed by guests of the Crime Science Podcast are those of the authors and do not reflect the opinions or positions of the Loss Prevention Research Council.