security | POS Software Advice

NGA Show
Come see the IT Retail booth at the NGA show Feb. 11 – 12 for a personal and friendly demonstration of cutting edge technology in the grocery POS industry! Our booth has a complete, functional, and comprehensive Point of Sale system for you test out. See you there!
Grocery Store Loyalty!
I recently cleaned out my wallet and I found about ten receipts from my local grocery store. At first I just brushed it off because they were just trash at the moment. But then I realized that I have ten receipts from the SAME grocery store! Not ten receipts from different stores, but ten from [...]
Social Media is Taking Over
When I cook I use all of my mom’s “secret” recipes, supposedly these recipes have been in our family since my great-great-great grandmother! But between us, I sometimes go online and look up recipes on how to make a certain dish (tell my mother I’ll deny it!). It’s not that I don’t enjoy my family’s [...]
No-Line Checkout Lanes?!
How many times have you caught yourself going to the grocery store for one or two items and you think to yourself, “Man, I’m glad this trip to the grocery store is only going to take me five minutes.” Then when you walk over to the cash registers and you see that there’s only one [...]
LiquiGlide Can Speed Up Your Ketchup!
I tend to write informative blogs, but today I thought I would change it up a little. So I’m going to write about something that I think is really interesting! Anyways, how many times have you guys had to pound the bottom of your ketchup bottle in order to get that last bit for your [...]
Fruit Drinks Have More Sugar Than Soda!
People are always trying to lose weight or live healthier lives by trying to remove anything that is unhealthy. They take away chips, sodas, cookies, and basically anything that tastes good! But what if I told you that most people are actually forgetting to remove one item from their diet that is worse than soda! [...]
The Cure to Obesity Could Be A Fat Tax!
There have been a lot of theories of how a country can beat the obesity problem that the world is facing. But I most recently heard a theory that I liked but at the same time I didn’t. A research facility in England believes that they found the cure to obesity…….a fat tax! Yeah you [...]

Self-Checkout Criminals On the Rise

Professional Grocers Talk, security No Responses »

Apr 122012

Self-checkout stand

Many grocery stores these days have adopted self-checkout stands to help speed up and enhance customers’ shopping experiences. Self-checkout stands certainly benefit the customers, but perhaps more than the company would like them to. A new wave of self-checkout theft has been taking place and could possibly be happening right front of you. Have you ever used the self-checkout and thought to yourself how easy you could trick the system? Well if you haven’t, someone else has and is now taking those thoughts into a reality.

The customers are taking self-checkout stands to a whole new level where tricks such as the “pass around” and the “weight abuse” are being used to steal grocery items. The “pass around” is where the customer takes the item around the scanner without actually scanning the item and places it on the conveyor belt. The other method is called the “weight abuse” where the customer for instance tricks the scanner by placing an expensive heavy item while using a price code for a much cheaper item in place of the costlier produce. In New Jersey five men were actually arrested for using such tricks in multiple grocery thefts but pleaded not guilty. However, a couple months later prosecutors find that the same men using the methods mentioned earlier to steal $10,000 worth of merchandise from Home Depot.

Grocery store security camera

The beginning release of self-checkout stands really excited customers and still continues to satisfy their shopping needs while turning an average grocery day into the ultimate grocery shopping experience. Grocery companies aim to give their customers what they want and need, but once they start taking advantage of such conveniences such as stealing at self-checkout stands are where they draw the line. Some security experts say that theft these days are five times more likely to be at self-checkout stands. In addition, recorded last year a typical American family must spend an additional $435 just because of the increase of shoplifting. Now grocery stores such as Albertsons are completely taking out self-checkouts to further prevent theft inside their stores while others are deciding to take another route. The other grocery stores are deciding to keep their self-checkout stands but are placing security cameras like the ones used at airports that are able to detect terrorists to try and catch these grocery thieves.

Self-checkouts are a great alternative option other than paying at a standard checkout lane. Self-checkouts can be fast and efficient, but some customers have taken that opportunity to steal grocery items instead. So the next time you’re at the grocery store using the self-checkout, keep an eye out because the person right next to you could possibly be stealing right from under your nose. Don’t let these thieves get away because in the end we suffer the consequences from their actions with increased grocery prices in order to compensate for their wrong doings.

Self-checkouts lean towards a trust-based system, but now the need for extra security is in order to stop grocery theft all together. For further information, take a look at this video on self-checkout theft: Supermarket Crime Wave in Self-Checkout Lanes. Also, if you’re interested in knowing more about self-checkout stands and its new technology in general, check out my recent blog on, The Future of Faster Grocery Checkout Stands.

What are your thoughts about self-checkout stands, are they more beneficial or are they causing more harm than good? I would love to hear your comments. Thank you again for reading!

Old technology helps prevent grocery theft

security No Responses »

Aug 222011

During this economic crisis many people are suffering, whether it’s that they were laid off, they are losing their house or maybe even both. We can all agree that times are hard right now. And due to the current economic crisis, theft has begun to increase. USA Today has reported that:

Burglary and Robbery is up 39 percent
Vehicle Theft is up 40 percent
Insurance Fraud and Identity Theft have also increased.

On the plus side, The New York Times has reported that even throughout the recession, violent crimes have decreased by 21 percent.

But a grocery store, Safeway, in Grand Junction, Colorado has found a way to stop local grocery theft. Safeway reports that people will go into their grocery store, fill up their grocery carts and then leave without paying. And all though Safeway employees understand that people’s current economic conditions are hard, they cannot allow people to continue walking into the stores and leaving with hundreds of dollars worth of groceries.

So Safeway has installed security systems on their grocery carts that prevent people from leaving the store without paying. This security system is not new technology, many of you have probably already seen it. Many big chain stores such as Wal-Mart, Target, Food-4-Less, and Vons already have this security system installed on their carts. It prevents people from walking away with the company’s carts, so when a person pushes a cart past a certain distance of the store one of the wheels will lock and prevent the person from pushing the cart further.

But Safeway has made it so when a customer pays their groceries their cart will unlock automatically so they can leave the store and unload their groceries in their car. But those who try to walk out without paying their cart automatically stop’s before they can reach outside, which prevents grocery thefts.

Are You Giving Away Your Credit Card Information?

security No Responses »

Jun 162011

Imagine this scenario: You are checking your bank statement and see that you have made a hundred and fifty dollar purchase in Baltimore, Maryland. The only problem is that you live in San Diego, California and you have not gone out of the state in the last year. So you call your local bank and file a claim stating that your recent bank statement has recorded a purchase that you did not make. So like every bank, they give you a claim number and tell you they will call you back. So after a short week your bank calls you and tells you that the purchase has been dropped and that they will send you a new credit card, you are relieved to hear this and assume that the conversation is over, but the phone call continues. The claim investigator asks you what recent stores you have been to in the last month. After disclosing the information, the investigator tells you that you have been one out of two hundred thousand victims that had their credit card information stolen and that the possible reason is that a POS had been hacked into.

Grocery POS Hacker

A computer that acquired a DLL is set up in a way that makes itself susceptible to corruptible DLLs. So I order to insure that you never get a rouge DLL you, I am going to over a checklist to maximize your computer security:

The Point-of-Sale (POS) is the location where the transactions occur at a store. POS systems have many different components that execute credit card transactions. For example, it reads the credit card and it transactions the credit card information to a source, like MasterCard, and it sends back a confirmation number. So companies try their best to keep their POS terminals as secure as possible. However, there is always a chance that a hacker can get into the main database and retrieve credit card numbers. For instance, I recently read about a threat where a hacker was able to install a rouge DLL on a number of POS systems within a network. For those of you that do not know what a rouge DLL is, they are shoppers’ worst night mare. It crawls into your system disguised to blend normally, until commanded to hijack the network. Since a rogue DLL masks itself from anti-virus software, detection is near impossible. It is not until the hacker sends out a command to “wake up” this DLL to creep through a network gathering important information..

Windows Security updates - Check for updates very often and install all the latest service packs on your computer. (Allow Service Packs to be automatically installed)
Firewall – Make sure that you windows firewall is turned on.
Anti Virus/ Anti Spyware – make sure that you install both an anti-virus and anti-spyware software package on your Windows PC.
Increased Browser security- Use well secured browsers such as Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, etc. With this not only will you be getting a increased security, you always have the regular Anti-Virus running on your computer.
Network setup – Add a strong password (something you can remember but that no one can guess) to the accounts located on the network. Use a windows limited user account for your daily work. As a user you cannot install software, so if you acquire a virus it will unable to do this because it does not have permissions to install programs.
Automatic Password Lock - This will lock whenever you step away from the computer to ensure that no one can come in and
Make sure your POS system is PCI compliant – Refers to the set of security standards to ensure account data protection.
Inform your employees of the latest security threats – Rogue Security Software has become prevalent in the recent years. It infiltrates computers via web pages that have been compromised and sends pop-up alert telling you that your computer is at risk and that you need to download their software so that you can remove the risk.

Sometimes, even after applying these security measures, it may still not eliminate the possibility of a rogue DLL hiding somewhere in the computer. Computer security professionals also advice to check the system restore point, since many times it gets stored somewhere in the past restore section. Some of the suggested steps to take is going into Safe Mode with the System Restore feature turned off and running a full and thorough scan of the computer using a well known Anti-Virus and/or Anti-Malware software. Though you may have deleted the Rouge DLL at one point, it can be regenerated by another program hiding in the system restore point.

While taking these precautionary steps you do not completely stop yourself from a hacker, but you do reduce the chances. Good luck locking down your computer!