Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

"When I think about secondary validation, that gives me more of a warm fuzzy even though we have people saying that I have a more sophisticated chip and that my smart device has got some protection sitting in it," said Bill Titus, the Loss Prevention VP at Sears. Read more...

Wal-Mart has recently been trying to more closely align stores with various online, mobile and social efforts. But like all major chains, brick-and-mortar management resistance is non-trivial.Read more...

It's a fine theory. Trouble is, it doesn't actually seem to work for most of the 16 retailers that ForeSee looked at, ranging from Best Buy and eBay to Avon and Target.Read more...

But it was the unequivocal declaration that payment systems had not been touched that raised eyebrows. At this early stage of a breach investigation—knowing that cyberthieves tend to be quite good at hiding their tracks and creating misleading tracks—is such a blanket promise to customers reckless?Read more...

"The E-receipt problem is that the customer now has a valid receipt. I can't bring it in. I'm not checking it off and signing off on it. So the ability to use that fraudulently increases unless you have a true returns management system," Titus said.Read more...

But what's really clever is how the contest uses social media as stealth customer engagement—an area where Wal-Mart hasn't been exactly brilliant in the past.Read more...

The shift in emphasis from compliance to being secure is not new, but PCI Columnist Walter Conway was struck by how pronounced a perspective change retailers are experiencing.Read more...

The conceal part of that action is considered evidence of criminal intent. Now let's see you try and enforce that rule when you have in-aisle mobile checkout.Read more...

The POS defense has been that chains need hardened systems. That argument worked when tablets were $500 and even $400. But now that Android tablets have fallen below $100, the argument falls apart. You could have four spares in the backroom and still be ahead.Read more...

The lawsuit is challenging everything from issuing banks' contracts to Visa's claims for counting up card fraud and pinpointing who's to blame—in addition to $1.3 million in card fraud that Visa says the restaurant enabled via an alleged security breach for which there's no concrete evidence. Read more...

On the mobile front, it's the first retail trial of PayPal's mobile payment program and it doesn't use a mobile device at all. (OK, that's more an embryo step than a baby step.) On the payment front, this is also a test of Home Depot accepting a rectangular magstripe card that doesn't say MasterCard, Visa, American Express, Discover or Home Depot on it.Read more...

We have our early clues from the CIO of the $2.5-billion 481-store Guess chain, one of the first test sites for Google Wallet in "a couple of stores" in California since May. In total, how many customers have tried Google Wallet? Says CIO Michael Relich: "Five or six." Not 500 or 600 customers, mind you. Five or six. Read more...

But the Guess iPad trial is hardly being done to save costs. The flexibility of the tablets and sharp, customer-friendly graphics make the devices a much more effective way to show demos and to locate merchandise, check inventory and do anything else that a kiosk would normally do.Read more...

But that's just the start. Does anyone really expect that Google won't take this further—and that your traditional SEO and social media teams aren't about to collide?Read more...

The vulnerability that attack uses is easily fixed. What's really worrisome is what makes the attack practical: the new ability to target server weaknesses that have been known for years—but no one worried about.Read more...

In-aisle mobile payment isn’t merely a new payment method. It has the potential to force stores to rethink almost all aspects of operations—and few have seriously come to terms with how different environments are going to have to be. At the NRF show in New York City next week, a StorefrontBacktalk IT panel is going to map out the least-anticipated changes. And if you’re around on Tuesday 2–3 PM (1A 21/22 at the Javits Center), please drop by and tell us what we forgot to include. Ann Taylor CIO Mike Sajor, Sears VP/Loss Prevention Bill Titus and the NRF’s Joe Larocca—moderated by StorefrontBacktalk Editor Evan Schuman&mdashlwill look at the neglected items. As a Florida hobby shop discovered while serving as an NCR in-aisle mobile payment beta tester, this in-store mobile payment stuff is a lot harder than it looks.

“It’s really a change management problem,” Sajor said. “Literally everyone has to think through all of the possible change behaviors.” As Sears thinks through in-store mobile issues, it’s seeing how everything will need to change, from the supply chain to customer interactions to SKU-level integrity, inventory and dealing with new threats to the supply chain. “Some significant competitive advantages are going to be lost,” Titus said. The panel will be pure discussion, with no presentations and lots of audience interaction. So please argue with us there. Don’t make me come and find you.…

The good vendors will be able to address all these questions. The not-so-good ones will hand you a carrier bag or a pen instead. Read more...

But it is clear that Amazon is drooling over its vast CRM files and trying to figure out how much money it can make off them.Read more...

Legal Columnist Mark Rasch wants to call it a bait-and-switch coupled with a breach of contract. The Uniform Commercial Code Article 2 for the sale of goods says that if there is an offer (PlayStation for $150!), an acceptance (click here!) and consideration (here's my credit card), then voila! A contract is formed. Read more...

Although Best Buy has yet to spell out how this happened, the most likely scenario is that it was the so-called perfect storm of bad timing and possibly a quantity typo. How much of a delay happened while employees desperately tried to find the—unknown to them at that point—non-existent merchandise? In a $50 billion chain, news can travel upstream very slowly. When the news is bad, it travels upstream even more slowly.Read more...

Age verification is something mail-order vendors have struggled with for years, and mostly given up on. But E-tailers can no longer use impossibility as an excuse. A recent federal law requires age-verification for tobacco sold online—and other age-controlled items can't be far behind.Read more...

The age-detection part uses an optical sensor to consider the customer's face shape, along with distance measurements between the eyes, nose and ears.Read more...

The good news is that this approach, in theory, will be free to retailers, because it will not necessitate any store IT changes at all. The problem—and it's a deal-killer—is timing. With the mobile onslaught, quick is almost certainly going to trump free.Read more...

There is more to protecting sensitive areas than installing video cameras. The second, and possibly thornier, concern for small and midsize merchants is how effective the reminder is likely to be when many of them mistakenly think they won't need to follow the advice.Read more...

The essence of the attacks' success leveraged two weaknesses: different unsecured remote-access packages used by various franchisees of Subway, which enabled easy Internet access to POS systems; and card swipes with minimal encryption. That meant key-capture software installed by the cyberthieves was able to grab data in the clear, as it was being swiped.Read more...