Over three-fourths of respondents said at the end of 2020 that they shopped more online due to COVID-19, and 86% of those plan to continue shopping online post-pandemic, said delivery management software company Metapack. But 81% of online shoppers had a negative delivery experience in the past 12 months, up fivefold from the prior year, which could lead to “lost customers and irreparable brand damage,” said Chief Revenue Officer Bruce Fair. Sixty-four percent would shop “the same” in stores in the future, 31% less than before, 6% more. The report cited two RetailX global surveys of about 10,000 consumers.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology scheduled its first virtual meeting with its Privacy Workforce Public Working Group for May 12, announced the agency last week. The group will develop a set of task, knowledge and skill statements based on NIST’s Privacy Framework and the National Initiative for Cybersecurity Education's Workforce Framework to assist with workforce recruitment.
The federal government should establish a comprehensive strategy for national cybersecurity and for mitigating global supply chain risks, the GAO said Friday. It urged federal agencies to implement hundreds of “critical” recommendations, including some 400 IT management and 750 cybersecurity proposals. Agencies have implemented about 75% of 4,700 recommendations since 2010, GAO said. It noted that in December, few of the 23 civilian federal agencies GAO reviewed “implemented foundational practices for managing information and communication technology supply chain risks.”
Staggering numbers stood out in Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ final shareholder letter as CEO, in Thursday's posting, citing the e-commerce pioneer’s revenue growth, employee expansion and towering stock price rise from its opening $18 per share valuation when it went public almost 12 years ago. Bezos will soon transition to executive chairman, relinquishing the CEO post to Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy. Of the company’s $386 billion revenue in 2020, $301 billion was value created, for consumer and AWS customers ($164 billion), employees ($91 billion), third-party sellers ($25 billion) and shareholders ($21 billion), said Bezos. The goal of a business “should be to create value for everyone you interact with,” said the outgoing CEO, who will hand over the reins to Jassy in Q3. Bezos calculated value to customers in terms of time savings. Customers complete 28% of purchases on Amazon in three minutes or less, and half of all purchases are finished in less than 15 minutes, said Bezos. He compared that time with “about an hour” shoppers spend in the physical store experience. He estimated a "conservative" $10 per hour in time savings. Bezos estimated the company’s value creation for customers using the AWS cloud computing platform last year at $38 billion, based on the assumption that operating in the cloud delivers a 30% improvement in costs, along with the increased speed AWS provides in software development. AWS revenue was $45 billion. Third-party seller profits from selling on Amazon were estimated at $25 billion-$39 billion, he said. Seven-eighths of the $1.6 trillion of wealth Amazon has created for shareholders since the stock began trading benefits pension funds, universities, 401(k) plans and individuals, he said. The stock closed marginally higher Thursday at $3,379.09.
Satisfaction runs high among U.S. adults who participated in at least one telehealth visit during the pandemic between March 2020 and Jan. 30, said a COVID-19 Healthcare Coalition survey published Tuesday. The group canvassed 2,000 patients December through February, finding that 79% of respondents were happy with their telehealth visits and 73% expected to continue to receive healthcare services virtually beyond the pandemic, it said. “It’s really encouraging to see that the high satisfaction scores are consistent across age ranges, insurance type, and regardless of whether the patient lives in an urban, suburban, or rural location,” said Steve Ommen, medical director of the Mayo Clinic Center for Connected Care, who supervised the study. “Years from now, we will point to 2020 as the year that the potential of digital care delivery became a reality.”
President Joe Biden will nominate Chris Inglis, a former NSA deputy director, to be national cyber director, the White House announced Monday. He plans to nominate former NSA intelligence officer Jen Easterly to be director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Comments are due May 29 on the FTC’s April 29 workshop on digital "dark patterns," said the agency Friday (see 2102240045). It seeks comments on definitions of dark patterns and their marketplace prevalence, plus their harms and mitigation and their influence on consumers. The workshop will discuss dark patterns as "a range of potentially deceptive or unfair user interface designs used on websites and mobile apps," said the agency.
Facebook unlawfully maintained a monopoly through exclusionary conduct in violation of antitrust law, alleged New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) and a bipartisan group of AGs Thursday in response to Facebook’s motion (in Pacer) to dismiss their lawsuit. “Facebook has successfully squashed, suppressed, and deterred competition, harming millions of consumers and small businesses with its illegal behavior,” said James. “Facebook’s scheme of predatory acquisitions and exclusionary conduct entrenches its monopoly power.” The states failed to “plausibly allege” Facebook’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp violated the Clayton Act, the company argued in its motion to dismiss. The AGs failed to show Instagram and WhatsApp were “uniquely situated to compete with Facebook,” the platform argued.
Computer malware detections were down over 43% year on year in 2020, partly due to work-from-home trends, said Rick Meder, solutions architect at SonicWall, at a Home Technology Specialists of America session, referencing the company’s annual cyberthreat report. But remote desktop protocol attacks soared from just over one per day worldwide in January 2020 to eight attacks per second in September, Meder said Monday. IoT malware detections grew over 66% last year globally and 152% in North America, said Meder. Cryptojacking is at a three-year high, up over 300% from 2019, he said. A widely publicized $50 million ransomware attack on Acer last month was the largest known to date, he said. The 66% increase in IoT malware is due largely to the proliferating entry points in smart homes, said Meder, citing a “major increase in hits on light bulbs” from different brands. Cryptocurrency is a particularly attractive target due to its value, he said. Bad actors are “going in and taking over anything that has processing power to attempt to mine bitcoin,” such as smart thermostats, lights, locks, controllers and TVs, since "everything is connected these days.” On how to deal with the threats, Meder said integrators have to consider what edge protection devices their clients need to secure their networks and smart devices -- and their hosted email. HTSA integrators need to move their businesses and customers away from routers with consumer-grade security to enterprise-grade with a next-generation firewall. He also suggested installing a VPN that’s locked down tight and protecting cloud services with phishing detection. The need for custom integrators to shore up cyber liability insurance is growing as “illicit cyberactivity continues to proliferate on a global scale,” said Tom Doherty, HTSA director-new technology initiatives. Global losses due to cybercrime will exceed $6 trillion this year, said Doherty, citing Cybersecurity Ventures data. Small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) are particularly vulnerable, he said, citing National Cyber Security Alliance data that shows over 70% of all cyberattacks target small businesses. SMBs that store any records online “need dedicated cyber liability protection,” he said.
Illinois legislators should support a bill that prohibits app store owners from forcing developers to use exclusive in-app payment systems for collecting user payments, advocates wrote Wednesday. Introduced in March by Democratic Sens. Sara Feigenholtz and Robert Peters, SB-2311 would “protect small businesses, entrepreneurs, and consumers from the harmful gatekeeping powers of large app distributers like Apple’s App Store and Google’s Play Store,” wrote the American Economic Liberties Project, Fight Corporate Monopolies, Color of Change, Fight for the Future, Illinois PIRG, Progressive Change Campaign Committee and Public Citizen. Apple and Google didn’t comment.