LPRC - CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 67 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio

Episode Date: July 24, 2021

Product Protection Summit is a Great Success! LPRC IMPACT 2021 is In-Person from October 4th to the 6th! In this week’s episode, our co-hosts discuss these topics and more, including the Delta Variant Continues to Spread, the Price to Start of Business Around the World Discussed, Purchasing Decisions are Discussed, and Cyber Warfare Escalates. Listen in to stay updated on hot topics in the industry and more! The post CrimeScience – The Weekly Review – Episode 67 with Dr. Read Hayes, Tom Meehan & Tony D’Onofrio appeared first on Loss Prevention Research Council.

Hi, everyone, and welcome to Crime Science. In this podcast, we 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. Take advantage of the advanced video capabilities offered by Bosch to help reduce your shrink risk. Integrate video recordings with point-of-s sale data for visual verification of transactions and exception reporting. Use video analytics for immediate notification of important AP related events and leverage analytics metadata for fast forensic searches for evidence and to

improve merchandising and operations. Learn more about extending your video system beyond simple surveillance in zones one through four of LPRC's zones of influence by visiting Bosch online at boschsecurity.com. Welcome everybody to another episode of Crime Science Podcast from the LPRC. This is the latest in our weekly update series. I'm joined by our co-host collaborators Tom Meehan and Tony D'Onofrio and our producer, Diego Rodriguez. And I wanted to just kind of welcome everybody to another episode. Here we go. We're still in this epidemic, pandemic, and that still continues to affect so many things.

You know, in the United States, we're seeing a rise in infections across 50 states. It's really interesting to look at the data and understand the difference between those that are vaccinated and those that are not. You're now starting to see some of the medical scientists refer to NVP or NVP2, the non-vaccinated pandemic. And I guess one must be, none of us were, of course, vaccinated when the pandemic started and spread and became, in fact, a global pandemic. Now, it looks like most of the spread, but certainly most of the serious disease and even fatalities are the non-vaccinated. So stay tuned, all of us, to see how this unfortunately plays out. We're seeing a lot of examples locally and nationally and internationally where those are, even those that are particularly against vaccination, who are getting very serious disease. And even we just saw another fatality in Georgia by an anti-vax activist, I guess, in this case. So just stay tuned. But I think

it's like we've said for over a year now. I mean, any virus can be dangerous to some of us and can even be fatal to some of us. And it's rare, but it still happens. And even if it's not fatal, if we get serious disease with these long COVID symptoms, there's always more data. I read even more coming out around the long COVID. always more data. I read even more coming out around the long COVID. Now there are some that have had COVID or had COVID, if you will, the disease from the SARS-CoV-2 virus over a year ago, right? Well over a year ago. And there's still tens or even hundreds of thousands are reporting. Clearly there's been some brain effects, some damage of the tissue. And so they are still experiencing either loss or differences in taste and or smell. And in fact, I know some of those people myself.

We should always be skeptical about everything. But at the same time, the idea that this virus is different than other viruses or that vaccination is different for this virus and other ones is a little bit unique, it seems to me. Now, just maybe in my experience and what I've been reading, but, you know, that, so there's, these things seem for real. Some are predicting that these COVID-related symptoms, particularly if they affect brain tissue and connections, could last years, maybe up to three or maybe even more. So that only time will tell what the situation is there. We know the Delta, the Delta Plus, the Lambda, the Beta, some of these variants are coming out.

And one reason we're hearing this next big wave that may hit would be the non-vaccinated pandemic too, is I guess the understanding that in order for a virus variant to emerge, it's got to be result from a mutation. Mutations only result from replication. That's how virus spreads in our body. And what the vaccines do, as we've talked about over and over, is that our body, it prepares our body. It launches, over and over is that our body, it prepares our body, it launches, pre-launches the critical antibodies and starts even develop some of the killer T cells and other parts of our innate and adaptive immune systems. And so we're ready, you know, we've kind of had a heads up, our body's kind of standing by and should we get some SARS-CoV-2 viral particles in us, and they make their way down the respiratory tract, then the body response is ready to go.

And that's why you just don't see the same disease state typically. Again, typically, it's what we're looking at on average that's probabilistic. So anyway, that's kind of what we're seeing. And then that replication in our bodies is typically stopped by our immune system. Our immune system has been activated by the vaccine. The vaccine just replicates or simulates the spike protein on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So it's ready. If it sees that spike protein enter the body, then it's ready. It's not only launches, but it's already even pre-launched. And so you don't see the replication that leads to mutation that leads to these variants that are much more transmissible and could be, only could be more deadly, but certainly more transmissible. And that's why you're seeing though, even vaccinated people, double vaxxed, even with robust immune systems anyway, but now they're ready to go because of a vaccination, can get test positive for the viral particles in us, be infected, in other words, or even have some mild symptoms, particularly because it's escaped or gotten around a little bit. on average, overwhelmingly, the immune system suppresses and flushes that from our system

more quickly, much more quickly. And so you just don't see the variants merging from the vaccinated component of the population, other than even if you're vaccinated, it doesn't confer necessarily sanitation or a total cleansing of it, but rather our body as rapidly gets rid of it so that there's no infection. We could still carry the particles and still be viremic or spread the virus to somebody else. We see a lot in the literature going back and forth around juveniles, and what does that look like? What's the risk to benefit? It's always risk to benefit. Whenever we drive our car, what are we trying to do? But there are risks.

We could be injured or killed by somebody that runs a red light or another thousand other scenarios. So we're always looking at risk benefit. It seems, of course, much more significant the older we are, the more compromised we are, the more exposed we are to viruses, in this case COVID-19 disease. exposed we are to viruses, in this case, COVID-19 disease. But the same thing with the kids, particularly those under 18 or 16 or even much younger. So people are making those decisions. CDC and FDA continue to study and weigh in. The UK made a decision right now based on a scientific panel there that right now they're not going to wholly vaccinate those under 18 unless there are special circumstances. That may have changed, of course, because what we know about things through scientific study continues to change. So, you know, looking more

about that, we see states like Arkansas and Missouri that have very, very low vaccination rates. The transmission, particularly of the Delta, Delta Plus or whatever variants, there is moving rapidly. And Florida, Florida's had a tough year with hurricanes and storms and shark attacks and lightning fatalities, but also the COVID-19. We're seeing that go, even though the elderly population was rapidly and almost completely vaccinated so you're not seeing some of the fatalities and so on coming out of this but you do see infection spreading in Florida but as I mentioned with Missouri and Arkansas they're now reopened COVID wards in multiple hospitals because they're starting to see some pretty serious disease and again we understand from looking at the research that if you're

obese, if we have other preexisting or lifestyle conditions that we're more vulnerable to be infected, to have serious disease and even fatalities. So that's kind of an unperfect storm in a way. The vaccines though continue to be under production. As we mentioned before, there are 97 in clinical human trials, human clinical trials, and 77 additional vaccine candidates that are still in different phases of preclinical analysis. And so that means we've got 52 in phase one, roughly, 38 candidates in phase two, and then 32 more additional candidates in the large scale. Phase three trials, 10 with emergency use authorization, eight with total authorization. One thing, be cautious. If you hear people talking about, well, these are experimental, everything's experimental. We're still learning about measles vaccinations, for example. We're still learning about just our standard heart disease

or even headaches. So whatever we do is somewhat experimental, but based on the evidence, if it's authorized, whether it's emergency use or after that, it's not necessarily more dangerous or more experimental than something that's been put through to the next phase. It just means there's more evidence, more deliberation on the evidence and things like that. So the other interesting thing we looked at around that is the idea there was a recent pretty large scale survey showing that at least 20% of Americans believe there are microchips in these vaccines, which I'm not sure exactly what the logic model is around that. What type, what the objective would be, how someone would manufacture microchips that would

be that microscopic, how they would actually be powered and transmit anything to anyone. I can tell you with RFID, the smaller the chip is and self-powered, when it goes through a reader, the read range can be centimeters. So I'm not sure what the whole logic model is. But the interesting poll was that something like 17% roughly of Democrats believe. So there are, this is a, you know, cuts across political, racial, class, and geographic lines, it looks like in the data. views than liberal views, but those that do have liberal views and even double digits in this case, for some reason, think that the vaccines contain microchips. So I think all of us are out there trying to safeguard vulnerable people. We've always advocated at the LPRC and as scientists that we be objective and try and understand the logic, the mechanisms and the way that things work,

as well as then multiple sourced rigorous data or observations around that. And the next thing is just kind of looking at employment and vaccination. We're seeing where courts are upholding workplaces, hospitals, and other places where there's now a requirement to be vaccinated to work there for the protection of the most vulnerable patients. And that's been, it looks like, withheld at whatever judicial level. And multiple law firms are putting out advisories that employers may, I guess, employ some types of restrictions and things like that.

So around rather vaccines or those that are working there should be vaccinated for the protection of the others. So that's going to be something that we'll all watch together. Some of the therapies are interesting. Some of the therapies are interesting. Many, many Americans around the world are benefiting from statins to lower their cholesterol levels, particularly the most dangerous LDL type cholesterols. And that there's mounting evidence that those that statin use could be protective against COVID-19 replication. We talked about how critical replication is. That's how a virus makes you sick. One or two particles aren't going to do it.

But as they continue to rapidly replicate and move through our bodies, our systems, that replication is what's critical. We talked about that's also how mutations occur and variants emerge. So that's an interesting finding. Again, we're not ever recommending anything here as non-medical scientists, but just sort of summarizing the news. But there are more and more of these therapies that are standard. People are looking at different pain relievers, aspirin, and other things that seem to suppress and make it more

difficult for replication, including activating certain antibodies. And when you compare, I saw a study comparing the Sino or Sinovac that I believe emerged from China versus the Pfizer BioNTech, that there was a much more dramatic antibody launch. In fact, over 10, at least 10 times more. And that seems to be what's the best at suppressing replication. So interesting things to know about. We're still not able to travel as widely as we like internationally as these things surge and so on.

And with the different changing rapid science and as everybody around the world remains in radical uncertainty, nothing seems to have changed in a year and a half now. And that way, I want to talk a little bit now switching over about the LPRC. Dr. Corey Lowe, one of our research scientists, put on one of the best events we've ever had. Kenna Carlson, another one of our scientists, did an amazing job with Violent Crime Working Group Summit. Carlson, another one of our scientists, did an amazing job with Violent Crime Working Group Summit.

In this case, Corey put on a summit, and it was almost an all-day summit, on product protection and looked at different product categories. He did extensive work working with multiple, multiple retail companies, their decision makers, around looking at assessing different solution options, trying to talk about, does this increase the effort for the would-be offender? Does it increase their perceived risk of getting caught? Does it reduce or diminish their perceived benefit or reward for stealing? Some of those are mechanisms of action, like with a drug, to see, or combinations of those, by the way, as well as how do we market it so that the would-be offender knows it's there, notices, understands, or recognizes it, and then responds. That's C, C get fear. And then how do we deploy? Which zone? Is this a zone one, which is on the asset or around it? The immediacy of it, is it a sort of a nearby zone two proximate type of thing?

In other words, point versus area protection device? Or is it something else? Do we prime it with something so the offender is much more likely to notice and recognize or see and get it and so on? Where we're blending in these logic frameworks, the scientific part, so that now the different solution partners that are looking at better ways to protect, but yet sell more of these products enable still much a lot of self-access and so on are easier for the customer, the shopper. So he curated that, came out, and then they went through teams and presented all day. Just an amazing event, huge positive feedback. And this is kind of the wave of the future.

Look for more of those events throughout the year at LPRC. The next thing, of course, is switching finally over to LPRC Impact. The 4th through the 6th of October still. We're maintaining record enrollment with the overwhelming majority expecting to come in here. I know that corporate travel policies or corporate travel budgets or even allowing conference participation continues to go back and forth, as does everything else that's going on. But it looks like we're maintaining an amazing enrollment level. A lot of sponsorship now pouring in from our solution partners to make for a fantastic event. The content set, you're going to see a golf outing again at the beautiful Ironwood Golf and Country Club on that Monday the 4th that morning.

You're going to see a series of meetings with our LPRC Board of Advisors throughout the day on that Monday the 4th that morning. You're going to see a series of meetings with our LPRC Board of Advisors throughout the day on that Monday the 4th. Then we'll have an incredible reception event at the UF Innovate Hub where our five physical labs are, where our team works out of. We'll have the benefit of the immediate south parking lot, the the lawn and then there's a really neat very extensive terrace partially covered it's just a beautiful environment we'll have the indoor lobby as well and then finally we'll be able to go up and we'll be curating tours up through the five labs and having putting on some pretty neat experiences you'll see also we'll be have we'll have golf carts available.

We'll be taking people over to the Zone 4, the parking lot lab area. We'll have some nice lighting and some pretty cool things going on. It's all right there together. So we'll be able to leverage and take advantage of the innovation square right there, the entire what we call Safer Places Lab, our lab environment that we've got permission to use for all types of extensive research. So the program starts Monday morning. We've got seven really amazing learning labs. We've got panels. The learning labs are just our cool breakout groups where we've got retailer and SP solution partners going through the latest research across the zones, even including Active Shooter, some of the content we put out in last week's podcast.

So stay tuned. We've got a great night event or evening event at the University of Florida's Swamp, the football stadium. Again, for like the sixth year now, a pretty amazing event, live music and all kinds of cool things going on there. But all our social events, you're going to look for a lot of good food and beverages and a lot of good conversation and people in some pretty spectacular events. And it's really a great part about the LPRC impact is that we're talking about an incredible amount of science-based content, interactions with the best and brightest in the world on this issue as practitioners, as developers, engineers, technicians, scientists, all getting together to go through these things in such a beautiful environment, a campus environment. through these things in such a beautiful environment, a campus environment, and that what happens there doesn't stay there when you leave. What's going to happen is we close the loops. The working groups

go back to work, all seven of them, throughout the year. We have five other events throughout the year and webinars monthly and cluster calls and all the research and development that's going on in the labs and in stores and parking lots and distribution centers. So it's really a pretty amazing ecosystem. And we're excited about, as you can tell, lpresearch.org. If you want more information to enroll, then we'd love it. We want to get you in there and interact. So with no further ado, let me turn it over, if I might, to a friend and colleague, Tony D'Onofrio.

Tony, fill us in. Thank you very much, Reed. And again, really great update. So just we had planned this week to be launching Loss Prevention Research Council Europe and the State Department actually earlier this week

issued a level four, do not travel. So it was opportune moment we had to postpone. So we will have to, we will postpone and we will have a Loss Prevention Research Council Europe launch at a later time. But the timing is just not right with everything else that's going on, especially in the UK right now. But let me switch to some good news on the US front. In the US front, there's actually some new data that was published in Statista in terms of how the U.S. is actually returning back to normal.

It's a recent report from Gallup that found that an increasing number of Americans are putting the pandemic behind and dropping measures such as social distancing and avoiding socializing. and avoiding socializing. The Gallup reports and fewer than one in five Americans now say they are mostly or completely isolating themselves from non-household members compared to a peak of 75% in the early stages of the pandemic in April. The top five and percentages that Americans report these aspects of their lives are returned to normal are 59% are socializing with friends and family, 52% are back out shopping, 51% have gone to regular parenting and raising children, 49% regular patterns of work, and 49% also see regular finances coming back. So we are in a recovery, although the Delta variant, especially this week, seems to have alerted in terms of challenges

that even in the U.S. here. Also interesting this week to me is how difficult it is to start a business in different parts of the world. So this is the cost of starting a business, and this is actually from a group called Vivid Maps. They actually mapped out all the countries in the world in terms of how challenging it is to start a business. So in Europe, there's a lot of diversity. In Slovenia, for example, you can start a business for free as long as you have a working capital of just over $7,000. In Italy, I was surprised.

It's the most expensive place, my home country, to start a business. It costs more than twice the average monthly income of nearly $5,000 to start a business in Italy. It costs only $17 to start a business in the UK, $320 in France, $741 in Spain, and $528 in Germany. For North America, Belize is the cheapest at $99. Bahamas is the most expensive at $1,800, which is 10x the monthly income for that country. In the U.S., I was surprised. It's only $725 to start a business.

Canada, much, much lower, $166 to start a business in Canada, $1,464 in Mexico. In South America, Venezuela is the cheapest, requiring only an amazing 21 cents to start a business in Venezuela. Suriname tops in at 3,000. Brazil, which is a large country, there is 212. Argentina, 167. And Colombia, 358. And finally, looking at Asia and Pacific and the major countries,

China is cheap. It's $137 to start a business in China, $142 in India, $647 in Japan, and only $46 to start a business in South Korea, which tells you how aggressive they are in business in that part of the world. And finally, Australia comes in at $379. Very interesting this week is how online and offline are playing with each other. And this is a future shopper report that was published by Wunderman Thompson Commerce. And they had a whole bunch of stats, which I'm going to rattle off because I think they're interesting in terms of how retail is changing because of the pandemic. 72% of global shoppers say that online shopping came to the rescue in 2020.

60% of global shoppers, they are not comfortable with technology. 80% of global shoppers say that their shopping has forever changed. 41% they are still frightened of shopping in stores. And this was shopping because for the U.S. it was actually higher. For the U.S., the ones frightened of going into actual physical store was 56%. 73% of global shoppers said that retailers need to get better at giving them product, service, and experience that they want. The top three factors that influence purchasing decisions online are price of an item, accurate product description, and easy to find what I'm looking for. And the top three reasons that we're encouraging shoppers to buy directly from brands

are 58% better price, 51% free delivery, so that's not going to go away, and 36% free returns. 30% of global shoppers expect goods at the order online to arrive within 24 hours. So Amazon was onto something in trying to get you those goods faster and faster. Interesting, this study also illustrates how powerful Amazon is getting. 56%, and I was shocked by the stats, 56% of USA shoppers said they would open a bank account with Amazon if they had a bank. 32% of global shoppers surveyed, they are Prime members. And again, this is global, which is huge. In fact, they reported that 200 million now Prime members. And 79% of Prime members believe that is good value for the money to have to pay those $120

a year. But when it comes to grocery, Amazon has a long way to go. Six percent of 65 percent of global shoppers say they'd rather go to a supermarket or order for one than shop at Amazon for groceries. And finally, my favorite stat in all this, which I've been stating over and over again, technology is playing a larger and larger role in how we shop. Sixty-six percent of shoppers wish brands and retailers would be more digitally innovative. Sixty-two percent of shoppers are excited about stores with no checkouts like Amazon Go. So technology is here to stay. go. So technology is here to stay. It's not really about how we go omni-channel from online to offline, to the curb, to everywhere else, and how do we leverage technology, a lot of which you can learn about here at the LPRC, to help those green shoppers shop favorably and to also

stop those red shoppers. And let me close with some really, really, really great news that was published actually last Friday. But for this podcast, I want to repeat retail sales in the U.S. were solid in June. The National Retail Federation said that June sales were up 0.8 percent and for the year they're up 12 percent. In fact, earlier they had projected that this will be the best year for retail since 1984. The NRF calculation, remember, excludes automobile dealers, gasoline station, and restaurants and only focuses on core retail. The June sales compared month-to-month with a decline of 1.9% and a year-on-year increase of 16.5% in May. For the first six months of the year, sales are up in the U.S. 16.4% compared to a year ago. And this is up really compared to the projection they initially had, which were in the range of 10.5% to 13%.

So retail in the U.S. is having solid, solid years. And what was really good is that sales in two-thirds of all retail categories rose in June, including the very challenged clothing. And Atronis was doing well, but Atronis continued to do very, very well. So a very, very, very solid month for retail, which, again, sets up a very strong second half. And depending on the pandemic, we will have a very solid holiday season. So I'm looking forward to that. And with that, let me turn it over to Tom. Well, thank you, Reed, and thank you, Tony.

A lot of great information. And I have a couple of topics. One, I think right now as we're taping live, I think Jeff Bezos is about to I know Tony and myself and Reid talk about that all the time. I'll start with some COVID things. I haven't talked a lot about COVID, but I thought it was an interesting... Reid had talked about the microchipping. And there was actually... Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get a sample of the video. There were a couple of videos online of services to remove your microchip. And when you watch the video, it was very clear what they were doing. They had a high-fre in between their fingers and they were using what would basically put into microchip a dog, which is still fairly large in comparison. But I thought it was interesting that, and this was a US based, if you call us, we'll help you disable your microchip.

And it was a bit of a scam and they were charging $25, excuse me. And that kind of alludes to what Reed was saying of this misinformation that's out there in this. You can still probably find news about microchipping in videos of people actually displaying a reader of a high frequency reader. This is all the videos I saw were HF readers that you would use to microchip dogs or pets. So it's fairly small, but definitely not injectable small like that standpoint. You know, it's visible by the eye for sure. The other thing that I know we've reported about several times, but there's been kind of a huge rise on with the Delta variant outside of the US. I've not seen this in the US where India specifically, there was a lot of actually advertisements for if you went into a local store like a smoke shop or what would be a convenience store in India that for $50 to $25, you could get an injection and what they were injecting was hopefully saline and that was what was come up. But it was a pretty rampant problem in the last two weeks where it felt like everywhere I researched,

you could find a place to go in and get an injection for COVID vaccine, which wasn't real. And I'm seeing that in some other places around the world. So we continue to see that. Luckily, we haven't seen that surface here in the United States. Switching gears to cybersecurity, and I think it's been in the last three days have been probably the most active as far as news. And we here on the podcast reported a Microsoft Exchange server hacking activity several weeks back.

And now the U.S. government and allies are directing that towards the Chinese government. the u.s government and allies are directing that towards the chinese government it was always known to come or originate from china but it wasn't thought necessarily thought it originally that it was state sponsored the now basically the uk and a lot of the european union um australia uh japan have all kind of sided with the united states saying this, in fact, was the Republic of China and this was a state-sponsored attack. This is very significant. Not significant in the sense that China is hacking, because I believe that that happens all the time, but that you have basically the US and all of its allies making a very public, bold statement that the Chinese government went ahead and did this attack. This was an odd

vulnerability that had to do with an older form of exchange servers. And actually, just to refresh the list, just remember, this was the one where the FBI on its own went ahead and shut down servers to protect people, a very rare move. And as of our last podcast, there was only about 10,000 servers in the United States that had still this vulnerability. But this is a kind of reminiscent of, if you read the conversations between the Chinese government and the US government, this gets back into that Cold War territory where there are significant sanctions and significant actions. And unfortunately, I believe that we have a high propensity for the next war to be a cyber war, which in all honesty could inflict more damage to the U.S. because we're on this island and we are somewhat safe from an invasion, if you will, unlike some other countries.

But unfortunately, we are susceptible to a real significant cyber event. So we'll continue to monitor it. What I can say is it's the most chatter that I've seen directed from major, major nation states making very bold statements. And when you take the mix of Japan, the EU, and us in, you do start to formulate what you would have seen in the 80s in the Cold War side of it.

So right now, this vulnerability is rather old in the sense that it's kind of been addressed and probably doesn't affect most of the users. It was a physical Microsoft Exchange vulnerability. So you'd have to have a physical mail server, which a lot of people don't today. vulnerability. So you'd have to have a physical mail server, which a lot of people don't today. But I do believe in the next probably 24 to 48 hours, we're going to hear a lot more about this, as well as a whole host of companies from the Revel attack that occurred over the 4th of July weekend are starting to surface. We talked about that a couple of times, and that seemed to be one of the largest single events that related to ransomware. It wasn't the largest attack, but it was the largest single event from a group where it affected about a million computers. I think it's a little bit

more at this point, and really 1,500 companies. And the companies are really still coming out of the woodwork of who's announcing what. I think some are still known. One of the companies are really still coming out of the woodwork of who's announcing what. I think some are still known. One of the companies that was said to be potentially impacted by that ransomware attack, but it definitely was a ransomware attack, was Campbell, Conroy, and O'Neill, which is a law firm. It's one of the largest corporate law firms that are out there. And it has customers like Exxon, Walgreens. I really believe it's like the who's who. Bose is their client. Toyota, British Airways, Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer. I mean, really, OfficeMax, Home Depot, Toshiba. When you go through the list, it is a substantial corporate law firm. they suffered a pretty substantial ransomware attack and they're

trying to work through it. The information really, what that ransomware attack is, is that it held, it just holds their information. So at this point, it isn't clear that any data was lost or there was a breach. This is a their their information not being available um so they're working through that as well as um you know here not not related specifically to the law firm but to that massive attack you have a couple school districts a couple municipalities that came out a school district in northern washington announced um there are there is a city who has not been formally announced in the southern part of the United States that I think we'll see in the news sooner. But this attack basically

affected 1,500 different businesses and commercial entities, as well as several private entities. So ransomware continues to be, in my opinion, for the folks that are listening to this and read myself and Tony, one of the biggest risks out there. It is a lucrative attack for the bad guys, and it's a fairly easy one to infiltrate. And really, it's about the human element of clicking on something you shouldn't or loading something in, and then your file is getting locked down. So I'm sure that we'll continue to hear more about it. but this ransomware attack will reach far and deep and affect businesses long-term. And then I'll wrap it up with a report

from Business Insiders. And I feel like it's important to kind of talk about the other side of it where the headline is Apple's iPhone has a major blinking red five alarm fire problem with iMessage security according to cybersecurity researchers. So I hesitate to say it, but I have no other way to say it. It's somewhat of a clickbait article, which it worked

for me because I immediately clicked on it and read it. But they're addressing a zero-day vulnerability that definitely exists, but Apple is very quick to respond to these. And for everybody that's listening, I think our listeners specifically because of what they do understand that if you build a mousetrap, there's a way around it. There is no perfect solution. And when it comes to information security, like an Apple iPhone, there are a lot of vulnerabilities that are called zero-day vulnerabilities that are not known about until the day it happens. There is no precursor for it occurring. So when security registers spend a tremendous amount of time trying to figure out how to break into it, inevitably they're going

to find the flaw. And one of the things that's great about Android and iOS is that in general terms, when a flaw is identified, there is a patch or an update released fairly quickly to address it. And that's the solution, right? The solution, I say it all the time, is to make sure that your cell phones, your PCs, anything really at this point, and any internet of things that can be updated is kept up to date because these vulnerabilities are constantly being found. And that's what makes us all susceptible. If you know that you have an update and you don't update it, you're basically leaving your doors unlocked. And that's the way I would always tell people is if you go and you lock your door in your house and you lock your doors in your car, by not patching, by not updating software, you're leaving your doors unlocked

and open and just walking away with things on your seat. So it is sometimes as simple as just keeping things updated. But I thought when I read the headline, I thought it was important to note that the bigger, more prestigious companies do really do the best job they can to patch and protect. But us as humans tend to say, you know, I'm going to update that tomorrow because I'm going to use my device and it's going to take an hour and I don't want to lose that hour. So, you know, it's one of those things that we, if we all do together, we can really help kind of curve some of these hacking attempts. Unfortunately, it doesn't curve the ransomware. With that, I'll turn it back over to Reid for an exit.

All right. Thanks so much, Tom. And I know that sometimes we're reluctant or forget, skeptical, and so on on the downloads. But it really does sound vital and critical for us, too because there are on, I guess it sounds like nonstop feedback loops for the developers as people uncover vulnerabilities or even hack attempts or other malware and things like that. So I appreciate that seemingly overly simple advice. That's really not. And like you said, it's just a matter of locking your door or putting valuables in your trunk or in a non-visible spot in your car, right? Or if a package is delivered that it's not readily

visible from the street or a passerby's, right? If somebody doesn't know, they're probably not going to initiate a crime or they can't get in. It's too difficult. All right. Well, thanks so much, Tom. And thanks so much, Tom. And thanks so much, Tony and Diego, for everything. And for all of you out there listening, please keep in touch. Give us your feedback. We need to know what you want to know, how you want to know it, things that you would like emphasized, questions you might have at lpresearch.org

or operations at lpresearch.org. So on behalf of my colleagues, please stay safe, have fun, and let's safeguard the vulnerable. 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 LP research.org. The content provided in the 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.