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Upcoming Webinars: May 2013

We have a rich history of running webinars at Veracode but it seems that recently we've been doing more in house and via partner channels. Going forward you'll see a monthly update like this post detailing all our anticipated online events to hopefully make you aware of our webinars sooner and help you plan for attendance if you're interested. Without further ado here's the slate of webinars for the remainder of May!

How Do You Influence the Security Posture of Your Business’s Third-party Applications?

I recently came across an interesting blog post by a team member at Acunetix that addressed a challenge many enterprises are facing when it comes to securing third-party components. This is a pretty hot topic in certain circles these days, and understandably so - studies have suggested that as many as 65% of an enterprise’s mission critical applications are developed externally. Additionally, Veracode research shows that a typical internally developed applications contains somewhere between 30% and 70% of externally developed code, indicating that even internally developed apps are utilizing code originating outside of their own walls.

#TalkingCode: Ask Chris Wysopal and Josh Corman Your Questions

Tomorrow Veracode co-founder and CTO/CISO Chris Wysopal, and Josh Corman co-founder of Rugged Software and Director of Security Intelligence at Akamai Technologies will be filming a video segment with Paul Roberts of The Security Ledger. The trio will be chatting about a variety of topics trending in the Appsec field including but not limited to; recent changes to the OWASP Top 10, security of third party software components, and industry culture.

IT Professionals: AppSec Is A Bigger Problem Than Malware

The ISSC released its latest survey of information security pros, which found application security issues at the top of their list of security threats. Are we surprised?

Can You Name the Members of the Veracode Research Team?

Our entire Research team is in town this week for a round table catch up and this fun artist's rendition of them materialized. Given that I haven't personally met them all I was unable to identify a few of them by these cartoons. I figured I'd turn to our trusty community to help me out, comment below if you you think you know an avatar's human counterpart with the number next to them and their full name.

Even You Can Compete in the Curated eCommerce Space!

Curation has been a hot topic lately, especially now that celebrities are being paid to curate or "hand-pick" products they like so the brand can then offer products to consumers from the celebrity's "personal collection". While this approach is typically reserved for large brands with the cash to find celebrities with large fan bases and plenty of disposable income, curation is not out of reach for smaller companies. In fact, if you're a smaller brand, not only is curation within your reach, it’s probably already happening and you may not realize it.

Developers need more training programs like SAFECode

A developer’s main goal usually doesn’t include creating flawless, intrusion proof applications. In fact the goal is usually to create a working program as quickly as possible. Programmers aren’t security experts, and perhaps they shouldn’t be. But when 70% of applications failing to company with enterprise security standards (data from Veracode SoSS vol 5), it is clear more attention needs to be given to secure programming techniques.

Executable Archaeology: The Case Of The Stupid Thing Eating All My RAM

Everyone has had that dreaded experience: you open up the task manager on your computer... and there’s a program name you don’t recognize. It gets worse when you google the name and can’t find a concrete answer on what it is and why it’s there. It gets even worse when you remove it from Autoruns and it comes back. It gets terrible when you realize it has keylogger functionality. The icing on the cake, however, is when the mystery program is also eating up all your RAM.

At RFID Journal LIVE!, Embedded RFID Takes Center Stage

In its 11^th year, RFID Journal LIVE! is the world’s largest event focused on RFID technology, products and solutions. This year’s event – held April 30 – May 2 - offered a great number of sessions across industries, including Defense/Aviation, Manufacturing, Retail/Apparel, Healthcare/Pharmaceutical, and Supply Chain/Logistics. Many end users presented success stories, and educational tracks on RFID deployment strategies, application development and enterprise infrastructure offered sound strategic advice for those evaluating the technology.

The event promoters indicated a record number of new products were being exhibited at RFID Journal LIVE! this year, and based on what we experienced, this appears to be the case. For ThingMagic, the focus of the conference was on communicating the value of embedded RFID and sharing our newest high-performance embedded RFID reader, the Micro.

For customers and prospects, the value proposition of the Micro rang true: The exceptionally small size and powerful performance of the Micro yields increased efficiency, reduced development costs and time-to-market advantages for RFID applications. In case you didn’t have the chance to visit our booth, below are some of the materials we presented at the show:

> Embedded RFID brochure

> Micro webinar (produced with RFID Journal)

> Watch an RFID Journal LIVE! 2013 ThingMagic Booth Interview (produced by our partner Atlas RFID!)

While the Micro and other small form factor, high performance RFID modules from ThingMagic are set to usher in a new era of embedded RFID for device manufacturers and solutions providers, it’s our customers’ products that end user organizations rave about. Here are a few that were demonstrated at RFID Journal LIVE! 2013 we thought were worth noting –

Zebra Technologies

Long a provider of innovative marking and printing technologies, Zebra used this year’s conference to introduce their new UHF desktop printer, ZD500R. Developed for retail, healthcare, and government deployments, the printer has an embedded ThingMagic Micro module, as it is designed for space-constrained environments that require accurate, on-demand printing and encoding. Available later this year, it will be Zebra’s smallest and lowest cost UHF RFID printer to-date.

VerdaSee

VerdaSee’s big news of the conference was the announcement of their new mobile 1-Watt UHF Gen2 RFID reader. The company offers fixed and mobile solutions that enable recognition and tracking of assets in a variety of environments. This latest development was financed in large part by the Telemedicine & Advanced Technology Research Center unit of the United States’ Department of Defense, as VerdaSee’s solutions are often used as a GPS solution for first responders and military logistics. As these deployments commonly require that readers be both portable and ruggedized, the ThingMagic M6e module was chosen for use in these units because of its small form factor and the versatility its multi-port capability offers.

Keonn Technologies

Winners of the Coolest Demo Contest last year at RFID Journal Live 2012 for their RFID-enabled AdvanFitting fitting rooms for retail stores, Keonn was back again this year with more to show. Keonn embeds ThingMagic modules in several of their solutions for retail, healthcare, libraries, and enterprise logistics sectors. The Keonn AdvanPanel, for instance, has the ThingMagic Micro embedded to read tags in Kanban cards, allowing Just-in-Time inventory systems to function properly. Retailers that want inventory information in real-time and a reduction in out-of-stocks use Keonn’s solution to process this information, and the Micro allows them to maintain a high level of performance while still keeping costs down.

ACURA Global

Headquartered in Brazil, ACURA Global's RFID systems are used in many applications in the commercial, utility and industrial sectors. In addition to being a valued ThingMagic reseller, ACURA integrates ThingMagic RFID modules into finished reader form factors. For example, the ACURA EDGE-50 is based on the ThingMagic M6e module, supports up to 4 monostatic antennas, and is ideal for vehicle identification, logistics and transportation applications.

Venture Research

In the logistics, supply chain and healthcare space, Venture Research offers RFID solutions to companies that can leverage added visibility as a competitive advantage. Because their deployments can vary greatly, Venture has found value across multiple ThingMagic embedded RFID development platforms.

Award-Winning Partners

An exciting part of each year’s RFID Journal Live event is seeing which products and deployments have pushed the envelope far enough to be considered for top honors at the industry’s leading event. We were fortunate to have partnered with two award winners this year:

Keonn for the second year in a row came away the winner of the Coolest Demo Contest for its RFID-enabled robot, AdvanRobot, which performs automatic inventory in spaces like retail stores. The battery-operated robot is comprised of an RFID subsystem, a mobile platform and a navigation system that allows it to move about and read RFID tags and take inventory without colliding or interfering with humans. AdvanRobot can not only provide highly-accurate inventory information, but can also give tag location of inventory items more frequently and with fewer errors and costs than humans, freeing them to focus on customer service and other more valuable activities.

The City of Grand Rapids, Michigan took home the RFID Green Award for their RFID-enabled recycling and refuse-collection system. The deployment optimizes recycling truck pickup routes and scheduling by collecting and analyzing data from tagged disposal bins. The system even incentivizes residents with programs that reward the most frequent recyclers with offers from area merchants. With residents recycling instead of putting everything in the trash, the city was able to lower refuse by 15%, increase recycling by more than 50%, and save $75,000 in the system’s first seven months – not to mention the intangible benefit of using RFID to rally a community around sustainability.

Congratulations to RFID Journal for producing another valuable RIFD Journal LIVE!

For more information on the advantages of ThingMagic embedded RFID, please email sales@thingmagic.com.

Is it time for a new eCommerce platform? When to Make the Leap so You Don’t Fall Off the Edge

As outlined earlier in my earlier post The Pros and Cons of eCommerce Replatforming, the decision to replatform is a serious one. Whether you're pushing for

Dexter Does AppSec: Life Or Death Matters In Medical Device Security

The case of serial killer (and nurse) Charles Cullen shows that arcane application security issues like race conditions can literally be matters of life and death in the healthcare field.

Enterprise Application Security with Evan Fromberg

UBM Tech Director of Content, Jonas Tichenor, interviews Evan Fromberg, Senior Director of Channel Sales and Business Development at Veracode. The interview hits the topics of enterprise application security, marketplace challenges in appsec and the partner program at Veracode. A transcript of the interview is available in the full post.

Pros and Cons of eCommerce Replatforming: Considerations for the C-Suite

We need a new eCommerce platform!” The cry arises in most companies today at some point. The system they have in place is either too large and unwieldy, too lightweight and insufficient, too complicated or not complicated enough.

Five Spring Initiatives to Implement for 2013 Holiday Success

To follow up on the recent post by my colleague on building sales during the forthcoming Mother’s Day and Father’s Day events, I’d still suggest that the best gift any retailer could receive would be a crystal ball delivered early enough to make a difference at that critical sales season, holiday.

Survey Finds Speed Trumps Security In Use of Open Source

A survey of 3,500 developers by the firm Sonatype found that use of open source software is exploding in the application development community. Alas, much of it is unchecked, with few if any controls over what- or how components are being used.

The 105 Year Old Teenager: Embracing Your Brand DNA

Happy 20th Anniversary, WWW…

It was 20 years ago today that CERN announced that the technology that underpins what we know as the worldwide web, would be available on a royalty free basis. As much credit should go to that decision as goes to its creator, Tim Berners-Lee. Imagine how different the technology world would be today if the expansion of this technology was tied to a royalty structure.

Desktop USB RFID Readers – Simple yet Versatile

The value of small form factor RFID readers is not difficult to understand – it is a combination of simplicity, utility and low cost that makes them a popular choice among application developers. Any industry can benefit from being more efficient, yet many are apprehensive to put resources or systems (RFID being an example) in place to make it happen, because of any number of barriers to entry – “it’ll cost too much,” “it’ll be too invasive,” “it’ll be difficult to integrate with our current operations.

ThingMagic’s USB RFID Reader is one answer to these concerns, particularly for users developing and deploying interactive read/write applications. Its small form factor allows users to deploy without affecting existing infrastructure. The reader’s ability to be controlled and powered by a PC means plugging into a USB port is typically all that’s necessary to integrate with existing hardware systems. And, its low cost makes it an easier investment decision. The variety of industries that the ThingMagic USB RFID Reader has made its way into shows this versatility.

Aerospace

Writing information to an RFID tag is easy enough when it involves something as simple as scanning workers’ ID badges into a system, but this becomes significantly more difficult when the tag you need to scan is attached to an enormous airplane part you can’t necessarily just drag over to any old reader. Companies like Honeywell Aerospace have begun applying high-memory RFID tags to various parts they manufacture so that they can be tracked from birth through their eventual use by airlines, and repair if necessary. To write and read information on these tags, which often reside on difficult to reach parts, Honeywell uses simple and portable USB RFID readers provided by ThingMagic that can be easily plugged into a laptop. Using a USB RFID reader to write and read these high-memory tags allows aerospace companies to easily attach information part descriptions, manufacture dates, part numbers, and serial numbers to the equipment being moved around a plant and even to other countries.

Healthcare

Healthcare environments – hospitals, clinics, etc. – depend on accuracy perhaps more than any other industry, as errors could potentially affect not only just business, but individuals’ health and well-being. A recent deployment by XECAN (watch video), a leading provider of smart RFID systems for healthcare, fixes ThingMagic USB readers to the desktop PCs in hospital exam rooms. Doctors can then scan their badge upon greeting a patient and have immediate access to that patient’s profile in the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system.

The time saved by not having to repeatedly enter login credentials for different software applications allows doctors more time to see patients and focus on care, letting the technology handle logistics. The entire process becomes more efficient and accurate, reducing potential errors and, in turn, lowering costs for patients, healthcare providers and insurers. And it involves little more effort from employees than simply touching their IDs to a desktop USB RFID reader. Download XECAN Case Study

Sports

These types of readers are just as often applied in fast-paced, often outdoor environments as part of athletic deployments, and can be used to easily replace the guesswork involved in athletic competition with structure and automation for accuracy.

When you consider the logistics of racing sports, for instance, it’s obviously important to have accurate time recording measures in place for properly determining winners and statistics. What’s often neglected, however, (and which we’ve blogged in the past) is the need to monitor for fair play – a lesson Rosie Ruiz taught us all the hard way in 1980 when she became the “fastest” female runner in the history of the Boston Marathon (until investigators discovered she’d skipped most of the race).

To protect the integrity of racing sports, companies like RFID Timing deploy RFID systems to keep track of athlete information and monitor their progress at different checkpoints throughout a race. In these types of deployments, a USB reader could be used to encode and check UHF tags before they’re placed on a racer’s number prior to an event. The readers are also used to scan athletes’ tags in various locations, for instance at the point where a runner would pick up his or her race pack. Automating a process like this ensures an athlete’s details are correct in a timing system’s database.

RFID-Powered Kiosks

Though you’ll typically see these types of readers on a desk plugged into a PC or laptop, use cases have evolved in parallel with the explosion of social media to popularize RFID-powered social media kiosks at event functions. Showing the more casual and entertaining side of RFID, providers like ODIN (watch video) put together interactive kiosks that allow people to more easily engage with others and share enjoyable moments from the events they attend. Users who touch their conference ID badge to an RFID-powered kiosk and choose to attach it to their social media accounts can then easily share updates, check-ins, and photos from the variety of sessions, booths, or events they visit.

A cool use case we’ve blogged in the past was for the Olympics this past summer when candy company Cadbury partnered with the social media tech company dwinQ to set up a large, purple, inflatable booth – the Cadbury House – that was RFID-enabled. Prior to entering the Cadbury House, visitors could tap their event badges to a ThingMagic USB RFID reader and then choose to link the badge to their Facebook account. From that point on, other readers throughout the attraction would automatically pick up visitors’ badges and give them different options for sharing content, such as a photo opportunity with an added backdrop of participants receiving Olympic medals in front of a large crowd. They reported that an impressive 75% of attendees opted to link their Facebook pages, checking in 5824 times and sharing 8958 photos. Download ODIN Case Study

The value of this type of reader, regardless of whether it’s found on a racetrack or in a hospital exam room, is that it can be easily deployed to provide immediate results. These types of readers are designed to plug simply into existing infrastructure so as to offer a quick solution that doesn’t disrupt ongoing operations already in place. The variety of applications – creative and entertaining like Cadbury to complex like aerospace parts tracking – shows its versatility. Because there are so few strings attached, virtually any industry could see improvements in performance, efficiency, or accuracy with desktop USB RFID readers.

Are you ready for Holiday 2013? It's April, yet we're only a month away.

For eCommerce executives and analysts, the topic of “Holiday Sales” is now a year-round discussion. It's as though the entire year now plays a supporting role in our quest to achieve end-of-year success. The clamor starts in February when we start hearing the calls to “Start Planning for Holiday". And then there are the Get Ready” and “Are You Prepared” checklists that arrive in late Summer and early Fall.

Thumbs-Up Magento! Technology Insights from Imagine 2013

The most anticipated announcement for Magento partners, clients and potential clients at last week's Imagine Conference was the release of Magento 1.13 Enterprise. In the release, Magento restored their focus on Core technology by retiring the X.Commerce "fabric" and reducing their focus on MagentoGo. The announcement also reinforced their "up-market" message as they continue to target existing and future Enterprise customers generating excess of 100M$ online. As highlighted by Magento CTO Matth

We're Going to the Superbowl! (of eCommerce) #MagentoImagine 2013

The Magento Imagine Conference (dubbed "The SuperBowl of eCommerce") is kicking off again this week in Las Vegas M-Resort. Optaros is sponsoring the event and several of us are exited to attend and meet partners and customers. One announcement expected during the conference is the formal launch of the Magento Front-End Developer certification to complement the Certified Developer and Certified Developer Plus (for Magento Enterprise) certification program

Are you embracing the new reality of “me-centric” retail?

Sitting at Demandware’s Xchange Conference 2013, you could feel the excitement of our new economy and see, in action, the innovations of so many retailers– all on exactly the same platform, and all catering to a new, “me-centric” consumer. The way we shop has changed forever.

BAI Payments 2013

The BAI Payments Connect 2013 Conference in Phoenix presented a broad mix of topics spanning payments, fraud and the state of the economy. I observed a great deal of interest in learning more about combating data breaches, as well as traditional threats such as insider theft and check fraud. However, mobile technologies and related issues was a dominant focus of the conference schedule, the expo hall and attendee mindshare. The agenda demonstrated the continuing momentum toward greater utilization of the smartphone in commerce and banking.

The rapid adoption of smartphones and e-commerce is compelling banks to formulate a strategy for mobile payments. Facing competition from non-traditional organizations such as Google....

Read full blog post

RFID in Healthcare is The Big Easy!

The Intelligent Hospital Pavilion at HIMSS in New Orleans earlier this month made it EASY to see the BIG value of RFID for improving the quality of patient care. Scenarios from the Pharmacy, OR, ICU and ED demonstrated how information is coordinated from diverse patient care environments with Near Field Communications (NFC), RFID, RTLS (real time locating systems), sensors and wireless technologies.

RFID has proven its worth in healthcare and continues to improve procedures and enhance workflows across a variety of areas, including:

Medication Management – ensures the right medication is delivered at the right time in the right dose by the right staff via the right means, as well as optimizes inventory of medication in the pharmacy.

Equipment Tracking – identifies the location and travel patterns of many types of valuable assets in real-time, resulting in reduced product loss, reduced capital equipment purchases & leases, improved maintenance levels, and enhanced patient services.

Patient/Staff Workflow – tracks the travel patterns of staff, patients and personnel in real-time for access control, improved patient & staff workflows, reduced wait times, and integration into anti-abduction, wander prevention, and hand hygiene solutions.

Departmental Loss Prevention – proven to deliver an ROI in a short period of time by saving high value assets from being mistakenly discarded.

Several of our blog posts cover the well-established use cases mentioned above. Check them out here: RFID in healthcare.

More recently, we’ve seen how this intelligent tracking can work regarding medical equipment. For example, scientists at GE Global Research recently won a $2.5 million contract with the U.S. Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) to develop an RFID system for their hospitals that will automate the transporting, cleaning, and storing of surgical tools.

GE’s system, which uses ThingMagic readers for its prototype designs, is the newest in a collection of smart RFID technology we’re seeing emerge in the healthcare space.

By leaving room for error in the management of surgical tools, hospitals can not only open their patients to the risks of infection, but may also slow surgery setup and turnaround times and inaccurately report their inventory. The system GE is looking to implement would use robotics to automate the transportation, cleaning, and sterilization processes but RFID would function as the brains of the operation to ensure the right tools are sterile and in the appropriate operating rooms at the right time. Together, the RFID and robotics elements would automate the collection of dirty tools from an operating room, delivery to a sterile processing center, sorting, cleaning, and sanitation post-surgery. For the next operation, tools would be automatically built into kits, sterilized, and stored until the next doctor needs them delivered to a different operating room.

The Department of Veteran Affairs, known to be early adopters of innovative IT solutions in healthcare, didn’t stop there. They also recently awarded a $543 million contract to HP Enterprise Services to put a Real Time Location System (RTLS) in place for the millions of assets at their 152 VA medical centers. An important part of this system will be the platform provided by Intelligent InSites - a ThingMagic partner - which will be applied to a number of RFID-enabled use cases, including everything from monitoring hand hygiene and tool sterilization to managing emergency department and operating room workflows. The deployment will offer the VA an unprecedented level of visibility and analytical intelligence, not only improving hospital efficiency and compliance, but also strengthening patient care and satisfaction.

Though RFID appears in different capacities throughout hospital systems – be it in dispensing medication, queuing patients, delivering surgical tools, or managing medical records – the goal behind deploying these systems remains the same: improved patient care.

Contributors: Debbie Power, ThingMagic

March [Fraud Prevention] Madness

March is Fraud Prevention Month in Canada. As the FIS Client Partner for our Canadian customers, I am doing my part this month by asking our clients in fraud prevention, “What’s keeping you up at night?” Of course this varies from customer to customer, but it comes down to protecting the institution’s vulnerabilities and the customers’ assets.

According to the Government of Canada Fraud Prevention Forum:

It is estimated that approximately 1 million Canadians are victims of mass marketing fraud and identity theft in Canada annually, at a cost of $10 billion.
Six in 10 Canadians had been targeted by fraud in 2010.
Nearly 80 percent of mass marketing fraud—using the telephone, mail or Internet to reach a large pool of potential victims—is conducted by organized crime groups and is currently the second most common criminal activity funding terrorist activities.
Despite the pervasiveness of the problem, 9 in 10 Canadians do not speak to anyone about fraud, and fewer than five percent of fraud victims contact the Canadian Anti-Fraud Centre to report the offence.

Its campaign is to prevent Canadians from becoming victims of fraud by educating them on how to "Recognize it. Report it. Stop it." The agency advises Canadians that, if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t.

I’ve recently learned that Canadian financial institutions ...

NOX Tracks Visitors at India's Largest National Executive Meeting

Contributed by our friends at Simply RFiD:

Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) is India's second largest political party in terms of representation in India's parliament. It is also the main national opposition party and currently governs nine states in India. In May 23-25, 2012, the BJP held its National Executive meeting in Mumbai. During the three-day meeting, the party gathers and frames their strategy towards the country's economic and political issues.

Challenge: Hundreds of people attend the conference including top political leaders, ministers, delegates, and reporters. In order to attend the conference, every individual must be registered and only those authorized can enter press rooms. Before using RFID, security guards at the different press rooms checked each person's ID badge and verified if they were allowed to enter the room. Not only was this a time consuming process for security officials and reporters, but inefficient.

Solution: Gyaantech, SimplyRFiD's exclusive partner and solution provider in India, helped the BJP organize the 2012 National Executive Meeting by installing the Nox Asset Tracking and Surveillance system. Nox-2 RFID paper tags were attached to each visitor's badge. Each tag included visitor's name, description, and RFID number. ThingMagic RFID readers and antennas were installed at doorways. Every time a visitor walked into a press room, the RFID reader read the tag and instantly updated the database. Security officials immediately knew how many people were in each room and if those attending the press conferences were authorized visitors. To ensure that no media equipment left the facility, items were tagged with RFID and Axis cameras were installed at the main entrance to record video if RFID tagged items were taken out.

SimplyRFiD's Nox Asset tracking System helped the BJP keep count of the number of people attending the conference and verify that only authorized visitors attended this important political meeting.

RFID in Race Timing: Mercury-6e Beats the Competition in Brazil

Filed from the front lines - where every tag read counts.

NgTechno and Tempo Certo Cronometragem-Race Timing with WaveLabs all based in Sao Paulo, Brazil, are offering race-timing solutions for running events and recently completed the design of their own RFID timing hardware, the WL4i. The new device is based on ThingMagic’s Mercury-6e module and among other critical features offers four antenna ports, Wi-Fi, and optional 3G cellular communication. The device can be purchased in a weather-resistant portable box for easy deployment at race events.


WL4i with ThingMagic Mercury-6e	WaveLab’s Race Timing Solution

Upon completion of the design, NgTechno decided to compare the new M6e-based product against their earlier solution based on the Speedway Revolution R420, designed and manufactured by Impinj. On September 19^th, 2012 the company timed the 5-mille Valinhos running race in Campinas, an industrial city located about 100km north-west of Sao Paulo. In this event and a number of others, rather than deploying a single system, the engineering team set up two completely independent systems: one system used the Impinj R420, the second system used the WL4i with the integrated Mercury-6e.

During the Valinhos race the WL4i/M6e collected a total of 5,333 tag reads, compared to 4,063 reads collected by the Impinj Speedway R420. At the start line, the WL4i/M6e successfully identified 439 individual tags, versus 436 individual tags identified by the R420. At the finish line, both devices identified 438 individual tags. In summary the WL4i/M6e outperformed the R420 in terms of total number of tag reads and hence overall system margin. The WL4i/M6e also outperformed the R420 in terms of the very important metric of uniquely identified tags at the start and finish lines.

Optimizing Data Management

In previous posts, we have discussed data in terms of its value and its characteristics. We characterized data as the "bedrock of enterprise software" in general, and fraud prevention in particular. If data is the bedrock, then data management is the foundation.

Every detection technique relies on good data and the more complete and contextual the data the more techniques can be fully supported. The responses to the posts were interesting as well, making points like, "There now needs to be a marriage of out of the box solutions with a flexible framework to allow you to adjust to the environment. Which very succinctly recognizes the yin and yang of data management; getting the data is only half the battle, you've got to be able to efficiently access it in a way that allows you to do something with it. Another response makes a similar point, "Data does matter indeed. Size matters too! Even if you have the Data, if you are unable to scale dynamically, you're no better off. In this case...

Findings From NRF 2013 - Will This be the Year of RFID in Retail?

The use of radio frequency identification in the retail market is far from a new concept, but one reported incident at this year’s National Retail Federation (NRF) Big Show in particular caught our attention. Jordan Lampert, COO of Truecount, a ThingMagic partner offering software solutions for mid-sized retailers, was approached at their booth at NRF and offered a cash deposit by the CEO of a nine-store East Coast shoe chain. The executive’s request? For Truecount to send a team out to begin deploying an RFID system for them immediately!

If you’ve attended NRF in New York City before, you’ll know that RFID has been a topic of conversation there for years – but for the most part, retailers haven’t been lining up with bags of cash in hand to put down towards implementing a system. Retailers who’ve already taken advantage of RFID systems are now able to show the fruits of their investment, while retailers who haven’t are unveiling plans to deploy the technology and admitting they’re behind the curve. This year, the focus of the NRF Big Show remained on store-level inventory and POS deployments, with mobile developments dominating the show floor; but a handful of major players in the retail space used the show as a forum to announce their particularly progressive partnerships and endeavors for the future as well.

Taking RFID beyond the store-level, UK retail giant Marks & Spencer and Avery Dennison announced a significant expansion to their nine-year RFID partnership, to the tune of a billion tags deployed in M&S’s more than 700 stores. Shawn Neville, president of retail branding and information solutions with Avery Dennison, explained that "as one of the UK’s biggest retailers, M&S is focused on providing exceptional customer experience and RFID enables that experience by ensuring inventory accuracy from the distribution center to the store floor, providing shoppers with consistent and accurate product availability in-store and online." And with 21 million shoppers walking in and out their doors each week, visibility into operations is entirely necessary for maintaining order.

Finding the benefits of RFID deployments similarly convincing, French fashion retailer Faconnable and Tagsys RFID are turning their partnership from a one-store pilot into a 70-store, multi-continental RFID rollout. By integrating Tagsys’ FiTS (Fashion-item Tracking System) with their third-party logistics suppliers, the sizeable fashion retailer will have complete coverage of the millions of items that they and their partners sell.

Shows like NRF are continually bringing together the greatest minds in connected technology and helping facilitate communication about the value of RFID. Just recently we posted about RFID at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and how fortunate we at ThingMagic were to be able to work with Alcatel-Lucent on the Connected Service Vehicle for their ng Connect program. Though RFID connectivity is already seeing success as a business technology, the attention it gets from major events like CES and NRF helps prove its worth.

For retailers in particular, business goals boil down to a handful of uniform desires: to provide the best customer experience possible, and to do so in the most efficient manner available. What these retailers now realize is that the visibility that RFID systems can provide to their stores and supply chains can affect more than just the cost savings of having better control over inventory. When the entire supply chain becomes a unified whole, the issues that have always frustrated customers, managers, and employees regarding inaccurate information about item availability no longer exist.

And regardless of whether retailers are realizing this because they’re seeing the benefits of RFID systems they’ve deployed or because they’re kicking themselves for not jumping on RFID solutions sooner, it was clear at NRF’s Big Show that RFID is at the top of the agenda for most major retailers.

RFID at CES 2013 – NFC Dominates, but UHF Wins My Personal Best-in-Show

I was walking the halls of CES 2013 last week searching for RFID applications and trying to cut through the noise of an overwhelming number of low-tech offerings: just about every second booth at the event was showing iPhone cases, adding up to probably at least one case for every iPhone user on the planet. Just in case there wasn’t any case to your liking, MakerBot is offering a desktop 3D printer to print your very own personalized case. NFC was a distant second, but still a highly noticeable ‘technology’ at the show.

LG is putting NFC tags into anyone of its new 2013 appliances. Initially homeowners connect to their new appliances with their smart phones using NFC. After the pairing, the smart phone can be used to control the appliance and get a remote status update over the Internet.

Sony shows how to pair a personal smart phone with an external speaker system: just tap the phone, and the music magically starts playing through the wireless speaker system, courtesy of NFC and Bluetooth - no wires and no tedious pairing procedure.

Samsung, in collaborations with Cesar entertainment, has installed in excess of 4,500 NFC-enabled so-called TecTiles all over Las Vegas. Visitors who scan a tile with their Samsung phone get access to general information about an attraction, watch tutorials on table games and slot machines, buy show tickets, or make dinner reservations at a nearby restaurants. If you ask me, all of this could be done with a simple QR code, but that wouldn’t be nearly as cool…

Incipio introduced an iPhone case with integrated NFC reader, capitalizing on Apple’s hesitation to integrate NFC in iOS devices…. but wait, am I rambling about smart phone cases again?

No question, NFC has reached a tipping point and is making its way into the kitchen, the living room, entertainment applications, and payment systems - in short pretty much all the applications it was meant to cover and then some. However, an easily overlooked little demonstration using UHF RFID - in my humble opinion - will in time have an equally important impact on the consumer electronics industry: NXP showed their I2C-RFID chip at work inside a tablet computer. In the demo, a retailer – online or brick-and-mortar - configures and customizes the tablet as a gift for a particular user at the point of sale. At check-out, relevant information is downloaded wirelessly into the I2C memory of the tablet: name and relation of the recipient of the gift, let’s say it’s your mom; access credentials of your mom’s home WiFi router, a gift card for X dollars of e-book downloads. As your mom opens the package and turns the tablet on for the first time, she is greeted by a full-screen Happy Birthday card signed by you. Next she is taken to the online store to select a book of her liking in exchange for the gift card. Each time she uses the tablet, the desktop image reminds her of you and the happy occasion of the gift.

I say, that is progress over the conventional way of introducing your parents to digital gadgetry - remember those agonizing phone calls trying to get their new PC online? I have written about how it works in detail here: Five-Cent Wireless Networking – The Most Important Invention in RFID Yet. Remarkably, NXP is able to show read-ranges in excess of ten feet by using the metal housing of the tablet as RFID antenna. Apparel retailers have started to put UHF POS readers and anti-theft gates into stores. I predict that electronics retailers will follow with similar programs shortly. In addition to using embedded RFID for shrinkage-prevention and logistics, Electronics retailers will be able to offer value-added applications for the consumer.

ThingMagic had a significant presence at CES as part of Alcatel-Lucent’s ng Connect program. Together with a number of other technology providers we designed the Connected Services Vehicle (CSV). Among other features, the CSV leverages UHF RFID for real-time asset and tool management on a services vehicle. If you want to know what the system is about, watch Alcatel-Lucent’s video of their presence at CES.

We'll Find Out Who's Naughty or Nice

As 2012 draws to a close, the Enterprise Fraud Services team at FIS Memento is reviewing the major fraud schemes and trends of the year. While fraud attempts are prevalent in all channels and across all products, there continues to be a lot of activity around monitoring employee activity.

Because our fraud advisors work closely with our clients, we have seen a shift in how our clients perceive the threat of internal fraud. Where they used to want alerts only on suspicious activity – e.g. a fee reversal on an employee account, they now want alerts that can assess how risky an employee might be based on behavior across a variety of scenarios – e.g. fee reversal, looking at high-value accounts, accessing accounts off-hours, etc.

It is no longer sufficient to have a monitoring system that runs a variety of scenarios on discrete fraud schemes like self-dealing, identity theft, etc. Our customers are asking for a more holistic view of their employees – one that incorporates analytics to identify all suspicious behavior. This approach generates alerts on employees, rather than alerts on individual fraud scenarios. A holistic staff monitoring system means that fraud analysts get profiles of suspicious employees ranked by their riskiness. The profiles are the result of proactive as well as reactive monitoring ...

RFID + Cloud + BIM for Managing Personnel in Vertical Construction

ThingMagic has had the opportunity to design, build and run an RFID–based personnel management system on a large construction project in California. Only three months after going-live, the general contractor is blown away by the system benefits and the richness of the collected data.

Construction management and building owners used to have to wait for weeks and months to get data on how their projects have actually been staffed. The new RFID-based system provides this information in real-time during each workday. Construction site management used to deploy several security guards and supervisors for the sole purpose of monitoring the work force in different sections of the building. Using the new system, management can monitor the flow of people in and out of zones from the office trailer: if a person enters an unauthorized zone, an instant email alert is sent to the designated supervisor. Most importantly, should there ever be an emergency evacuation event on site, the system provides real-time updates on who is left in the building and where.

System Overview

We have deployed a three-tier system with a distinct sensor layer, database layer, and application layer.

Figure 1: RFID-based Personnel Management in Vertical Construction: Major system components and system architecture.

Every worker on the construction site is issued a passive UHF-RFID-enabled ID card, which the individual wears on a lanyard around the neck. The sensor infrastructure consists of RFID-reader-enabled secure turnstiles for access to and egress from the job site; inside the building under construction we have installed Mercury6 RFID readers and antennas to systematically cover the entry areas of the building, staircase landings, man-lift landings, and the entrance areas of elevators banks. As a worker moves from one building section to another, the portal readers pick up the badge ID of the worker and associate the individual with the new space or zone.

Raw sensor data is sent in real-time to a cloud-based database, where the data is translated into high-level events such as zone entries and exits, and then stored.

A multitude of web-enabled applications have access to the event data through a web API.

BIM Integration

The General Contractor and other stakeholders are given access to the data via a number of interfaces, including a mobile-device friendly web portal and email reports and notifications. However, the core filtering and reporting engine has been implemented as a plug-in to Tekla Structures, the comprehensive Building Information Modeling (BIM) and CAT software developed by our sister division Tekla.

The construction manager can visualize the personnel deployment on site within the 3D model. He or she has the ability to specify the time window of interest, the subcontractor, the zone, and other properties. The selected population of workers or a particular individual is presented along with a work zone selected in the model.

Benefits

Why would a general contractor or project owner deploy this system? Our RFID-based people management system provides:

Real-time visibility into worker location during an evacuation event
Instant alerts on security or safety breaches
Instantaneous reports on sub-contractor staffing levels
Real-time updates on personnel-related compliance issues or ordinances.

Figure 2: Full-time equivalent construction personnel over a period of about seven weeks by day, subcontractor, and zone of the building under construction.

Supported by RFID and cloud-computing, emerging life-cycle management solutions are enabling new levels of innovation, productivity, collaboration, and growth in the construction market and others. Organizations that can best harness this “Big data” opportunity will hold a distinct competitive advantage.

The New Age of Check Fraud

By Joe Gregory of Orbograph

In the ever-changing landscape of payments fraud, one constant remains: fraudsters will always find a way. Traditional check fraud continues to linger as a loss conduit for financial institutions as well as retailers. The “traditional” activities of counterfeiting, forgeries, alterations and deposit fraud are still prevalent, but a new age of check fraud has already begun.

The ability of technologically savvy fraudsters to install malware on corporate clients and retail accounts has generated a wave of distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS). This approach enables the criminals to access copies of checks online and feed downstream fraudulent activities. In fact, an Association of Funding Professionals (AFP) 2012 survey shows that checks are the payment type most vulnerable to fraud and in many cases is seeing an upward curve in activity.

A Paying-Bank-Centric Model

Technologies in image processing combined with data analytics can build a strong wall of protection for the paying bank. In the past, inclearings were posted on Day 1 and available for other functions, yet fraud detection did not take place until Day 2. Prior to new Reg CC laws of next day availability, this was not as much of a concern. However, today financial institutions need to ...

How Zebra is Proving RFID’s Worth

Every day we’re connected through technology. This communication between people, devices, networks, and everything in between has become so prevalent that it seems ordinary for most. Clearly what we now take for granted has been years in the making, with innumerable individuals and companies working to make it happen. But I think it’s worth highlighting the recent successes of companies like Zebra Technologies, whose leadership has helped to make this connected world possible, and has helped put technologies like RFID at the center of this movement.

Zebra - a partner of ThingMagic for many years - provides enabling technologies for organizations with high-volume, mission-critical or specialty labeling needs. Several Zebra products use ThingMagic embedded modules to encode RFID tags used for item-level tracking applications such as healthcare specimen tagging, supply chain work-in-process management, and retail item tracking, among many others. Zebra’s recent recognition by Frost & Sullivan as the 2012 Company of the Year in North America for their high-value products, robust portfolio, deep market penetration, and optimized channel strategy is a testament to the impact they have had on the entire industry. Their reach is impressive – having shipped over 11 million printers of all kinds to nearly 100 different countries – and is a driving force behind making RFID-enabled solutions a viable option across markets.

In addition to their execution on the technology end of business, Zebra has done a good job articulating to the public the importance of an interconnected world, more specifically promoting an understanding of the value of the “Internet of Things.” To further an understanding of this concept, Zebra recently partnered with Forrester to produce a study that helps IT decision-makers better understand the importance and growing presence of Internet of Things solutions. The RFID-based technologies behind the Internet of Things are used to solve business problems like supply chain inefficiencies as well as inspire innovation in organizations. And as the survey revealed that 82% of organizations either have Internet of Things solutions in place already or plan to put solutions in place in the next 5 years, it’s become clear that the Internet of Things will become a household concept in the very near future.

Congratulations Zebra! We as an industry should follow your example of explaining and promoting the value everyone has and will experience in this increasingly connected world.

Five-Cent Wireless Networking – The Most Important Invention in RFID Yet

Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on the R&D effort to develop passive RFID tags that can be offered for five cents or less. Have we succeeded? Almost. In high volumes assembled UHF tag inlays cost somewhere between seven and ten cents. Along the way, however, the RFID industry have invented something far more important: five-cent wireless networking!

What is it and how does it work?

Both NXP and Impinj have released RFID chips that offer an Inter-Integrated Circuit (I2C) interface in addition to the Gen2 RFID interface. The new chips also include significantly more memory compared to previous generations of simple-passive RFID IC’s: NXP’s UCODE I2C offers 3.3kBit of EEPROM memory; Impinj’s Monza-X offers 2.1 to 8.2kBit of EEPROM memory.

Electronics manufacturers have been using I2C-enabled EEPROM memory chips for decades to store small amounts of data persistently, including configuration data or boot-loading information. As the main microprocessor of a device is powered up, it reads configuration information from the memory chip via the I2C interface.

The new generation of I2C-RFID chips will maintain this functionality, but offer more. The memory content can be accessed through the I2C interface and through wireless RFID interface using a standard UHF Gen2 RFID reader. Since the RFID chips can be used in passive mode, the EEPROM memory can be read and written to without powering the host device.

Why is it so cheap?

Fully assembled conventional RFID tags require the actual chip, an antenna substrate, and the conversion into a usable package. A relatively small percentage of the cost can be attributed to the chip itself. The biggest cost items are the handling, assembly and antenna substrates.

When I2C-RFID chips are placed on printed circuit boards, the antenna is etched into the board at virtually no additional cost. The assembly is part of the surface mount board assembly, i.e. it’s also virtually free. Hence the only real cost item is the IC itself. The I2C enabled RFID chips are more expensive than the regular passive RFID IC’s, however, most of that cost can be attributed to the large memory of the chips. Since I2C-RFID chips replace conventional EEPROM chips, the marginal cost of adding RFID and hence wireless networking amounts to a few cents.

What is it going to be used for?

Device manufacturers will include the I2C-RFID chips to store essential configuration, licensing, or product information persistently. Since the memory can be written to over the air, configuration or licensing information can be applied to the device using an RFID reader without turning on the device.

In manufacturing, the RFID chip can be used to identify and serialize the device (WIP tracking). Once manufactured, channel partners are able to configure devices in the warehouse or at the point of sale without taking them out of the box.

Post sales, the device’s host processor can log information on usage hours, failure modes, misuse, use of consumables etc. on the I2C-RFID chip. As the device is sent in for maintenance or repair, the information is available to the service center through the RFID interface. Once again, the device does not have to be tuned on to read out the information.

Intel announced recently that it has included an I2C-RFID chip with the reference design for its new Windows 8 tablet computer, making Intel and its OEM partners the biggest users of this new capability yet.

Why is this so important?

More and more of the objects we buy and use on a daily basis include electronic circuit boards to support and enhance basic functionality: Nowadays toys like to speak to their child owners, kitchen appliances can be programmed to turn on at arbitrary times, toothbrushes beep when its time to switch sides, and power saws shut off electronically when safety is compromised. Today, few of these devices are networked and few are RFID-enabled. The inclusion of the new I2C-RFID ships will enable both RF networking and RF identification. Almost overnight networking and identification of inexpensive everyday objects has become feasible and realistic.

We have long been waiting for the Internet of Things to become a reality. I think I2C-RFID chips will finally make it happen.

(Photo: Tom Hurst / RFID Journal)

Why the Micro is the Best RFID Module Ever

Let’s face it, we have developed quite a few RFID modules over the past decade. We have developed small modules, high-power modules, modules with low-power consumption, modules for handhelds, modules for printers, FCC-certified modules, ETSI-compliant modules, and modules designed for the Chinese market. Why on earth would we develop yet another module which – at first glance - doesn’t offer additional capabilities over previous generations?

The short answer is, that never before were we able to package all these features in a small, inexpensive, and powerful design. The M6e-Micro offers previously available capabilities in ONE module. It therefore enables all the applications we have supported in the past, and more.

If you prefer the long answer, I believe this is the best UHF RFID module ever for three key reasons:

1. Size

Size is extremely important, especially for small end-devices such as handheld terminals. If the RFID module doesn’t fit physically into a host device, it will not be considered for a project, no matter how powerful it is. At 26x26x4mm, the M6e-Micro is smaller than any module we have designed in the past and smaller than any other module in its class on the market.

The engineering accomplishment here is not so much that we were able to squeeze a bunch of components onto a small board surface, but that we were able to keep the board at a reasonable temperature. Since power amplifiers generate quite a bit of heat, up until now the difficulty has been to design high-power modules in small packages without major heat-sinking surfaces. The M6e-Micro overcomes this limitation. It can transmit at full power despite its small size.

2. Power output and power consumption

The Micro offers a maximum of 30dBm of output power which represents the maximum power output allowed in North America and in most other worldwide regulatory environments. In passive RFID systems, even a single dB of additional reader output power can make a huge difference in performance. The Micro offers between three and seven dB more output power compared to competing devices in its class.

As important as output power is, many mobile devices use low-power modules in order to save battery life. The Micro enables the user to turns on high-power in burst mode when needed, and then switch back into a low-power mode to save battery power. This is the exact capability needed by handheld RFID terminal vendors who want to push the read range of a device without sacrificing battery life.

3. Regional compliance

By now we know that electromagnetic emission requirements for North America, Europe, and China cannot be met in one and the same reader device, unless separate filter banks are implemented to support the three key regions. That’s exactly what we did on the M6e-Micro, despite the fact that the device is smaller than anything we have designed before. The Micro is the first full-power RFID module to support every RFID region in the world with the possible exception of Japan (Japanese RFID regulations are still debated).

In summary, the Micro is a real engineering beauty and packs many of the features of earlier generations of modules in one device. Within weeks, I expect a dozen of Micro-like datasheets to be published by our far-east competitors. The only difference to the ‘Micro’ will be, that those devices either will not get developed at all, or they turn out to be out of spec in a few but important aspects. Usually the copycats forget to design in compliance, which only becomes evident to the customer late in the design-in process.

So here is my advice for you, dear customer: check on the compliance and certification performance of competitive modules, or – if you prefer to save yourself the time and agony - choose the M6e-Micro right away!

For more information, check out these resrouces:

>> Micro datasheet

>> Whitepaper: Getting a Read on Embedded UHF RFID: Why RFID Modules are the Smart Choice for Developing Next-Generation Solutions

Embedded RFID: Why we got excited about passive RFID in the first place!

Fifteen years ago my ThingMagic co-founders and I worked as research assistants in the MIT Media Lab’s Things-That-Think consortium. Our main agenda was to embed intelligence in everyday objects such as clothing, toys, and furniture. We quickly realized how important passive RFID would be for implementing the vision of smart and networked objects and ultimately the Internet-of-Things. Today, passive UHF RFID outperforms any other technology in applications where a large number of tags are attached to inexpensive objects and where readers are embedded in the environment to quietly understand the objects around them without human intervention.

In the years since, we haven’t always been true to this insight into the sweet spot of RFID applications. In fact, my co-founder Ravi Pappu and I like to pride ourselves in having proposed the use of RFID for just about any imaginable scenario. In our enthusiasm for the technology and our eagerness to help customers, we have put tags on people, retail shelves and vehicles of all types including fighter jets, locomotives and racecars. None of these applications deal with millions of inexpensive objects; most of these applications require expensive, portal-type reader set-ups; and none of these applications helped the RFID industry develop its full economic promise.

On the other hand, when we deployed embedded RFID reader modules, usually with the help of OEM customers, our efforts resulted in scalable projects generating long-term repeat-business. This success can only partially attributed to our market leading position in UHF modules. Embedded RFID readers quite simply outnumber their fixed reader cousins by an order of magnitude, much like WiFi-enabled devices outnumber WiFi access points.

The most successful embedded RFID applications continue to be RFID-enabled printers and RFID-enabled handheld terminals. RFID-enabled label printers, for example those made by Zebra Technologies, are a necessary ingredient of any high-volume RFID application. Labels have to be encoded, no matter what you use them for.

RFID-enabled handheld terminals have become the workhorses for the majority of workflow applications. In logistics, retail, or construction alike, workers need to truly interact with the objects they are handling. They require a user interface to fill out forms, collect the electronic signature of a customer, or record the geo-location of a particular object. RFID-enabled handheld terminals offer these capabilities: at the low-end, terminals include Bluetooth and a single-button user interface; at the high-end, terminals include every imaginable wireless capability in addition to RFID, along with a full keyboard and a big screen. For example, see Trimble Announces New RFID Accessory for Nomad Handheld. All of these devices include one common element: a ThingMagic embedded RFID reader module.

More recently, other exciting embedded applications have emerged: Keurig is embedding RFID readers in their single-cup coffee machines. The machine recognizes the RFID-enabled coffee container and optimizes its settings to produce the best coffee possible.

Intel is enabling its OEM customers to embed RFID tags with every Windows 8 tablet computer at the time of manufacturing. This will enable embedded readers track the devices during the manufacturing process and into distribution. Retailers will be able to offer customized licensed features and configure the tablets using embedded RFID readers at the point of sale. Service centers will be reading out information about a device without even taking it out of the box or powering it on. How will they read out the information? They will be using RFID-enabled handheld terminals or other embedded readers.

In conclusion, once in a while we should remind ourselves why we got excited about passive RFID in the first place: we saw the opportunity to make inexpensive, small, but pervasive objects part of the networked world. Embedded RFID readers continue to be key to realizing that vision.

RFID-enabled Robots Create Efficiency in the Workplace

Robots have certainly undergone their share of transformation over the years – from the stereotypical robot in “Lost in Space” to the child-friendly WALL-E – and I think Kevin Ashton, in a recent RFID Journal article, made a good point in arguing that robots have managed to shed creepy images, but have yet to make the complete transition to being human-like.

One ongoing limitation is that robots have not been able to have a true dialogue with humans - like that between Luke Skywalker and C-3PO, who boasted to be fluent in "over six million forms of communication"! Can RFID bridge this communication gap?

A few years ago, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Duke University embarked on a project where they used ThingMagic readers with robots in a healthcare setting. With long-range read capability, the robot named EL-E can move freely while still being able to detect RFID tags in various locations, and a finger-mounted, short-range antenna enables her to interact with a tagged object, such as handing a stethoscope to a physician. EL-E can also assist physically-impaired people, giving them the appropriate medicine bottle when they are unable to help themselves. We’ve blogged before about how improving the patient experience can also accelerate the patients’ recovery. A robotic right-hand-man could allow nurses and physicians to spend more time researching, talking to and engaging with their patients, and therefore being able to treat the individual.

Check out another robot from Georgia Tech's Healthcare Robotics Lab - GATSBII - a PR2 robot from Willow Garage outfitted with patch antennas and a ThingMagic M5e reader, as seen on CNN’s The Big I show!

More recently, and right here in Boston, we are seeing more investment in robot technology with companies like Rethink Robotics looking for new ways to make our industries more efficient and cost-effective. Their flagship product, Baxter, is designed to fit seamlessly into a manufacturing environment to take certain types of work off the hands of employees. Because of the enhanced level of interaction between human and robot, the robot can perform risk-posing tasks such as climbing a tower to do repairs, or repetitive, assembly line work that could free up people to do more complex, value-added tasks. In doing so, people can become more productive and the business is more efficient. And we all know that greater efficiency is the key to success in today’s economy.

The video below demonstrates how Baxter interacts with humans.

With RFID tags becoming more ubiquitous , can this be the technology that breaks down that communication barrier between robots and people?

It may be a while before we can think of a robot like C-3PO as our wing-man, but with RFID we may be able to more naturally interact with the next generation of robots – not in Hollywood - but in the business arena.

A Conversation about RFID and Big Data

A couple of weeks ago I was fortunate to be able to speak with InformationWeek’s Jeff Bertolucci, a respected voice in the Big Data space. In a conversation stemming from our Future of RFID infographic, we discussed the role RFID is playing in the revolution brought on by devices communicating with one another and individuals and enterprises relying more on technology.

In general, we are all connecting more with the world around us every day and RFID can be thought of as an enabling technology that pulls it all together. Clearly it contributes to the amount of data generated by business and consumer activities, but it can also be used to manage it – and in the words of a recent report by InformationWeek, “the big data challenge is real.”

New and innovative uses of RFID are emerging on a daily basis - reshaping the way we (vendors, partners, end users) should be thinking about the technology. It can no longer be viewed as a niche technology or a replacement for barcodes. In a previous blog post, we introduced the intersection of RFID and Big Data to get people thinking about the technology in a bigger way. Business managers are seeing cost savings, consumers are enjoying new efficiencies, and generally speaking, people are able to more easily connect their online world with their physical world.

So what do you think – is RFID becoming more of a household name in Big Data conversations? Or do we have a few more years of flying under the radar?

In our view, RFID plays an important role in managing Big Data and facilitating the Internet of Things, even though it’s never been the flashy new technology that has commanded headlines - well, until now at least.

Stealing Customer Data Should Never Be This Easy

I think many of us are asking the same question about Randy Mainwaring: How did he manage to get a job as a [Bank] branch manager given his police record? Prior to joining the bank, Mainwaring allegedly planted drugs in his wife’s car as well as attempted to burn her home down (the arson charge was subsequently overturned). I’ll leave it up to the reader to determine Randy Mainwaring’s overall mental stability, but the facts of the case certainly indicate that he has experienced some mental distress.

Shortly after joining [the bank] in 2006, Mainwaring used a former customer’s information to open a new bank account without that customer’s permission. He subsequently emailed himself information associated with 2,937 current as well as previous bank customers. In July 2007, he took his plans a step further by allegedly faking his own death, placing an obituary in a local newspaper and obtaining a fake British death certificate. Once [the bank] discovered the data theft and brought charges against Mainwaring, it apparently spent $45,000 on security measures to prevent similar thefts in the future.

Notwithstanding Mainwaring’s colorful behavior, there are plenty of facts associated with this case that are concerning...

Why RFID Will Drive the Internet of Things

Inevitable, open, and inclusive are just a few words Rob van Kranenburg used in a recent article The Sensing Planet: Why The Internet Of Things Is The Biggest Next Big Thing to communicate the growth and adoption of what he loosely defines as the global process to enhance all objects with some form of digital identity. Van Kranenburg, a teacher and consultant on the topic, believes that U.S. industry and government bodies aren’t taking as active a role in its adoption as we are – the people – who are coming to own and drive the movement.

But don’t consider this a mark against it. This isn’t a bad sign for the Internet of Things. In fact, since its inception, the Internet we’ve seen evolve over the past twenty years has itself functioned a lot like the Wild West, with people driving its progress more quickly than any governing body or private business has. It’s clear that a number of factors will drive our world closer to this connected world, but we believe it’s RFID that will be the unsung hero supporting the people to drive this shift.

Van Kranenburg referred to RFID and the rest of the “ecology” surrounding the Internet of Things as “nothing fancy; mostly radio, quite mundane,” but that’s what we love about RFID. Its wallflower-like characteristics enable it to blend into our lives, and that’s the very reason it will drive this movement. If any technology requires extra steps, behavioral changes, or new inconveniences, it can’t take off.

We live in a connected world, but in reality it is hundreds and thousands of systems that all operate separately. RFID is the glue that passively, yet intelligently, connects our doctors to their patients, our cars to their parking spots, and our businesses to their products. It will be the connection between the intranets we already have established that forms the Internet of Things we all imagine coming to life.

Van Kranenburg will be communicating how he perceives the Internet of Things at the PICNIC conference this week in Amsterdam. In fact, the theme of this year’s PICNIC is “The Shift from Top Down to Bottom Up,” articulating that it’s the people driving innovation, not the legislators and business leaders up top.

For an idea of what’s possible with RFID growth, Tik Tik, one of the businesses attending PICNIC, is using the example of children checking themselves in and out of daycare with RFID keychains and rating activities they’ve chosen there for their parents to see via a secure Web site. The conference will most likely usher in a new era of understanding just how universally applicable RFID technology has become. I’m willing to bet that in years to follow, RFID will have a much bigger presence at this show because people will have recognized its role in driving the Internet of Things. If you’re not yet convinced, we have an Infographic that could change your mind.

RFID’s Answer for City Congestion

If you’ve ever circled city blocks over and over looking for a parking spot (which should be just about anybody who’s ever tried to find parking in a city), you’ve probably wished a voice would just tell you exactly where to go. And if navigating congested city streets has ever frustrated you, it won’t be surprising to hear that more than 30 percent of traffic congestion in cities is caused by drivers looking for parking.

According to a study performed by UCLA Professor Donald Shoup, who surveyed 15 city blocks for one year in downtown Los Angeles, the search for a parking spot created about 950,000 extra miles of travel – equivalent to about 38 trips around Earth! Not only is this excess travel clogging city streets, it is wasting gasoline - 47,000 gallons in those same 15 blocks, or about two and a half swimming pools. This is money, time, and resources that drivers and city officials have been letting go to waste for years.

People take crowded city streets as a given, but in reality there are massive inefficiencies that are entirely surmountable, particularly with RFID technology in place. In cities ranging from Stockholm to San Francisco, the parking technology firm Streetline is partnering with IBM to install RFID-based parking-management systems as part of IBM’s Smarter Cities initiative (a subset of Smarter Planet, focused on congestion solutions, greener buildings, water management systems, and the like).

Logistically, this involves embedding transponders in the pavement of a city’s parking spots, attaching readers to permanent structures like lamp posts, and setting this system up to transmit information to a software platform from IBM that can manage the data that comes from Streetline’s readers. Magnetic sensors installed in the pavement can detect whether or not a vehicle is in a given parking space, meaning cities can now view the flow of parking availability in real time. Doing so has allowed city officials and drivers alike to realize that at any given time there can be as many as 2,000 parking spots available, when many had believed there were none. Amazing.

For drivers, finding a parking spot no longer has to involve circling and clogging the already-congested city streets, a process that on average will take 20 minutes in a business district, according to IBM’s Global Parking Survey. That could be the difference between being late for a business meeting or making it on time. Instead, it can be as simple as loading the free “Parker” app, looking at open spots nearby on the map, and navigating to the most convenient one.

City management stands to gain the most from the technology, as they have access to Streetline data, trends, and reports, enabling their parking managers and enforcement officers to work more efficiently. Managers of parking garages can locate spots that have been occupied for too long or are vacant, and can use that information to better serve their customers. And a better understanding of the flow of traffic and parking availability also allows for more efficient planning of transit schedules and infrastructure projects around the trends city officials see.

Based on the costs of inefficient parking management revealed by the UCLA survey referenced above, Streetline can save people time, money, and gas, while simultaneously bringing in more revenue for a city from the efficiencies created, particularly from a more organized system of issuing parking tickets and better accommodations for tourism. This can make a difference for municipalities facing big budget deficits that need new and better sources of revenue. If city governments can significantly reduce traffic congestion and air pollution, and drivers can save time and gas money simply by gaining better visibility into open parking spaces, it’s a worthwhile investment that has the potential to pay for itself in a very short period of time.

RFID & GPS for Waste Management

Locationing and Auto-Identification technologies are being used in a number of waste management activities - from using GPS for fleet management, to RFID-enabled recycling incentive programs, to contributing to several breakthroughs in smart packaging.

And, the innovation continues. Just last week, Trimble Environmental Solutions announced cBin™, a new solution for managing remote recycling containers. According to the announcement, cBin allows hauling operations to save time and money by reducing fuel consumption, labor, and truck wear and tear incurred when they pick-up empty or partially full containers.

The cBin solution consists of a remote sensor that sends fill level and asset status information via wireless communications to a Web portal that can be accessed to manage container inventory and pickups. cBin sensors automatically measure container fill levels hourly and send updates to the cBin portal.

The scBin Portal ummary screen provides an "at a glance" view of all containers in a community for rapid evaluation of container status. Immediate updates are sent if fill levels exceed action levels.

While GPS technology has certainly been a difference-maker for fleet management, and now container monitoring, Challande – a Swiss waste management and material transportation company – chose to integrate RFID with GPS, setting them up for a greater return on their investment than if they just had GPS alone.

For 10 years, when Challande had a GPS system in place, they could see where their trucks were located and could then manually track down the various containers and waste bins they owned – a system that got the job done, but not one that was entirely efficient. Challande has hundreds of pieces of equipment they need to monitor. By attaching RFID tags to trailers, trucks, and cargo this year, they have been able to gain a more comprehensive view of the many moving parts of their company. The difference from using GPS alone? Now the exact location and ID number of every bin and truck Challande owns is automatically aggregated and sent to their existing management software.

For Challande, the return on their investment is coming from all directions. Their risk of misplacing bins and other property is now practically non-existent. The time their employees used to spend tracking down bins is no longer an expense they have to account for. They don’t have to spend time or money implementing new management software, because they can integrate the new RFID tags with their existing system. Challande can even minimize delays in transportation and delivery by looking at an item’s distance from its destination and making adjustments on the fly.

Challande, and many others, are already watching their RFID systems pay for themselves. And, as highlighted in our Infographic – The Future of RFID, the convergence of RFID with technologies like GPS is helping companies better manage their assets and the myriad of moving pieces they are responsible for.

Over the next decade, the convergence of wireless technologies will be augmented by RFID systems and the integration of passive RFID as part of this platform will be driven by the potential to measure, report and monetize a growing number of transactions in the physical world. In certain applications, it is hard to imagine a future where everyday physical objects won’t have "built-in" RFID.

On Tour With RFID

The emergence of RFID on the concert scene should really come as no surprise. As music festivals of all kinds are gaining popularity, organizers want their audiences to have one less thing to think about when it comes to getting in the door. RFID enabled wristbands do just that. In addition, they offer all kinds of added benefits - such as combatting ticket counterfeiting, supporting cashless payment, and even integrating with the fans' preferred social networks.

RFID was initially used as a ticketing solution for large outdoor music festivals, starting in 2004 with its adoption at SXSW in Austin, TX. It emerged in the form of wristbands and cut down significantly on gate crashing and lost tickets. It also introduced a cash-free payment system, which is undeniably popular since it can be risky to carry around large amounts of money. Though mainstream use of RFID spans nearly a decade, it wasn’t until its much publicized implementation at popular music festivals like Coachella, Lollapalooza, and Bonnaroo did people really begin to take notice.

According to a recent article published on Hypebot.com, RFID adoption at concerts has been steadily increasing; this year was no exception. The main focus of attention, though, was focused on concert goers ability to “Check-In” via their Facebook account. Companies such as Intellitix are contributing to the success of RFID and social media at the concert scene. At both Bonnaroo and Coachella this year, Intellitix powered Facebook check-ins via their “Live Click Stations” where fans could upload a picture of themselves to Facebook at their favorite band’s concert, surely becoming the envy of their friends!

It doesn't stop there. Fans are also able to go beyond Facebook status updates and include various tie-ins with sponsors and off-site partners. At Roger Waters-The Wall tour this year, more than 70,000 fans had their RFID enabled wristband linked to their Facebook account. This process allowed them to post messages from Amnesty International during the concert aimed at spreading awareness about Amnesty’s 50-year battle for human rights.

The statistics in this market are getting pretty interesting. At Coachella, more than 30,000 people registered to use the Live Click stations to update their status on Facebook. Bonnaroo took it to a whole new level with over 74,000 registrations for check-ins at the “largest Live Click Stations ever made.”

RFID offers proven benefits when it comes to streamlining concert admittance and combating ticket counterfeiting, but with the continued popularity of social media platforms, it is probably safe to say it hasn’t reached its peak!

dwinQ RFID Social Media Platform Wins Gold at London Olympics

It’s hard to say which event has been the most thrilling to watch; men’s swimming knowing that this may be Michael Phelps’ last Olympic hurrah, Usain Bolt setting an Olympic record in the 100-meter dash, or the fierce competitions in sports that we usually don’t get to see like fencing and water polo.

In the middle of ‘the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat’, of the London Olympics, we are also excited to hear of RFID-enabled social media’s place on the medal stand.

As the Official Treat Provider to the London 2012 Olympics, Cadbury has created Cadbury House – inflatable purple domes in Hyde Park where guests can easily share their experiences with friends and family. With a passive UHF RFID system created by dwinQ, guests at the Cadbury House can immediately link photos of their Olympic visit via their Facebook pages – creating a seamless (or as dwinQ calls it – frictionless) social media experience.

Here’s how it works: RFID Journal explains that guests are given badges that contain EPC Gen 2 passive UHF RFID tags. They then register their Facebook account information which is linked to the unique identification number encoded in the badge's RFID tag. When guests enter one of the Cadbury Houses, they can check in, simply by having the badge near a check-in kiosk, each outfitted with ThingMagic readers.

Once the first reader has checked-in a guest, he or she can simply go to any pre-determined location throughout the park, such as a photo area. The RFID reader in that area captures the tag's unique ID number in the badge, communicates the information to Dwinq's social-media platform, which then links the appropriate badge ID with the right Facebook account, and posts an update on the person's page.

Since the 2012 Games began, Cadbury House has been receiving approximately 3,500 visitors daily. The Company expects 50,000 guests to check-in over two weeks, which means that the Cadbury House Olympic experience will reach a huge number of people through social media channels. According to the press release, “The solution creates fun for guests while simultaneously amplifying Cadbury's brand messaging to hundreds of thousands of people beyond the event attendees.”

Once again we see that RFID + Social Media = Reach.

This is reminiscent of a similar experience offered at RFID Journal LIVE! a couple of years ago where attendees could extend their event experience over social media. Our case study, “Building Brand Loyalty and Reach through RFID and Social Media” can be downloaded here.

For more information, check out dwinQ’s blog post on their Olympic experience. And while you’re at it, don’t forget to “Like” ThingMagic and dwinQ on Facebook!

RFID in Retail - No Stopping it Now

There has certainly been a lot of talk recently about innovation in the retail sector, a lot of which can be found in PSFK’s most recent Future of Retail Report. Essentially, it comes down to enhancing the customer experience. Retailers are listening to their shoppers and considering new technologies to deliver what they are asking for, whether it is a webcam enabled algorithm that helps them find the right fit or a location aware smartphone app that provides sales-staff with customers’ preferences.

The use of RFID in retail to deliver enhanced customer experiences is growing as well. For example, Macy’s recently announced in a Forbes article that RFID will be an integral part of the new 63,000 square foot shoe department opening this fall in their Herald Square location. Similarly, JCPenny CEO Ron Johnson revealed they would be moving “…to a 100% [item-level] RFID implementation by February 1, 2013.” Macy’s and JCPenny are not unique in their decision to embrace RFID, as many retailers now understand the countless advantages the technology has to offer (for more, see our blog posts on RFID in retail).

For Macy’s, installing RFID in the shoe department will be their first “broad use of RFID.” After shoes, Macy’s plans to expand into basic merchandise - items that they need to make sure are always in stock and are in need of constant replenishment.

JCPenny's RFID strategy is centered on revitalizing the customer experience at the century-old department store. According to reports, the retailer is starting by implementing an RFID-enabled mobile Point of Sale (POS) solution beginning this fall. This is the first step in the company's plan to use RFID storewide to eliminate traditional check-out stations. The end goal is to allow any customer to check out anywhere, anytime, including self-check-out, by 2014.

At the end of the day, RFID is about simplicity and innovation. By automating manual tasks, RFID technology can improve the customer experience while driving sales and reducing costs. Add progress made by industry organizations such as VICS and their templates for retail best practices, and the barriers to RFID adoption in become very low.

In 2010, we blogged about RFID in retail in the article RFID-The New Future of Retail. We noted Wal-Mart’s famous 2004 mandate requiring its top 100 suppliers to apply RFID tags to shipping crates and pallets to drive efficiencies into its supply chain, and many innovative uses of the technology since. With Macy’s and JCPenny grabbing some of the spotlight now, it sure seems like big retail players are beginning to recognize the value of RFID in meaningful ways - taking advantage of the process improvements it has promised to deliver for over a decade and enabling unique personalized customer experiences that today's shoppers are demanding.

The Future of RFID - Infographic

Infographics are cool. They've been developed to visually represent data about a great many industries, places, and people. Everything from Understanding Carbon Offsets to 7 Things You Didn't Know About the Golden Gate Bridge to The State of the Internet to The History Of Steve Jobs & Apple have been depicted in Infographic form. Yes, there is even an Infographic of Infographics!

I've found a couple of Infographics that touch on The Internet of Things and the global supply chain like IBM's Stories of a Smarter Planet, but I was a bit surprised to find that there aren't many that cover Auto-ID technologies or RFID in particular. So, here's our pass at creating a visual representation of The Future of RFID. Take a ride along the path of Adoption, Convergence, the Internet of Things, and Big Data - ending in a place where RFID systems will become an integral part of the consumer and business experience!

Download a PDF of The Future of RFID Infographic and don't forget to let us know how we can help you with your RFID project!

Embed the image above on your site:

http://rfid.thingmagic.com/rfid-infographic">http://rfid.thingmagic.com/Portals/42741/images/ThingMagic-Infographic_FINAL_July201.jpg" alt="The Future of RFID" width="540" border="0" />
Presented By: http://www.thingmagic.com/">ThingMagic

View more than 100 other innovative ways in which Radio Frequency Identification and Sensing (RFIDS) is being used to automate data collection, identification, and location systems worldwide - 100 Uses of RFID

We Don't Have an Employee Fraud Problem...Do We?

“People only see what they are prepared to see.” - Ralph Emerson

Financial institutions often do not want to admit that their employees are stealing from them, yet they know that many attempt to and some succeed. While there are banks that adopt a proactive stance by deploying advanced technology to identify the red flags of employee fraud, other banks hold their collective breath hoping and praying that they somehow miraculously avoid employee fraud altogether. Or worse - they are thoroughly convinced that they don’t have an employee fraud problem.

Let’s consider that last statement in light of the third party fraud losses that all banks face. If you can’t track and monitor employee activity within your bank’s systems, how can you say for sure that a third party fraud loss didn’t involve an employee? Without data to prove to the contrary, your bank’s third fraud losses almost certainly contain losses associated with employee fraud. Left unchecked...

Everyday RFID – What You Can’t See is Making Your Life Easier

In a recent episode of The Big Bang Theory, the studio audience had a good hearty laugh about a character’s use of RFID – tagging, scanning, and tracking every item of his clothing – to “simplify” the process of packing for a weekend trip. Though we shared in the laughter as Sheldon happily takes only three hours and eleven minutes to enable himself to track the distance to and weather conditions around each pair of his socks, one question does come to mind: just how far-fetched is the idea of everyday RFID use for consumers?

While the sitcom character is making an exaggerated and absurd use of the technology, finding it necessary to explain step-by-step the elaborate system he’s created, the truth is that RFID has become so integrated into our society that most people don’t even realize just how much they benefit from it. In fact, if on a typical day of errands, you drove your child to a doctor’s appointment, swung by the public library, and treated yourself to a little shopping, you could encounter RFID at every stop along the way. RFID in your keys gets you into your car. RFID in your toll pass keeps you moving along the highway. RFID in hospitals tracks your son or daughter’s medicine. RFID in library cards tracks the books you’ve checked out. RFID in clothing tags tells retailers if your favorite styles are in stock (they should be, with the technology uniting the supply chain as well). And the list goes on.

However, if you were ever to strike up a conversation with someone about how cool and useful RFID is, you would get a lot of reactions eerily similar to that of the character’s roommate in the The Big Bang Theory clip. But perhaps that is a testament to just how effective RFID is as an integrated technology. It’s becoming so pervasive that people don’t realize it’s been making their lives easier and will continue to do so on much broader levels as it gets more widely adopted by both businesses and consumers. So while our friends from The Big Bang Theory continue their back-and-forth (and somewhere, someone plays the laugh track on repeat), the reality is that RFID typically isn’t even part of the conversation – it’s in the background simplifying data collection and enhancing processes so we can concentrate on our everyday activities.

How RFID Can Turn the Retail Supply Chain on its Head

It’s no secret that technology is transforming the way we do business, but with some innovative thinking on the part of retailers, businesses are in store for a level of efficiency they’ve never seen before – in part, thanks to RFID.

These new efficiencies are coming in ways that, until now, have seemed counterintuitive. In a recent blog, Software Advice's Michael Koploy details how retailers are beginning to fill online orders with their in-store inventory – essentially turning their entire supply chain into one cooperative “warehouse.” This may seem like a nightmare to maintain, detrimental even, if you consider the possibility of more frequent stockouts, but in fact RFID has made this an incredibly viable option for the modern business world.

As retailers begin to incorporate RFID into their supply chains, tagging every piece of inventory and scanning items as they move from warehouse to distributor to retailer, suddenly enterprises are afforded a much higher level of visibility into the location of the various moving pieces of their business. Businesses are now able to treat their in-store inventory as an extension of their warehouse because RFID redefines what it means to track inventory – what was once a few teenagers counting boxes in the back room of a store with a clip board and pen is now a highly organized and incredibly accurate automated tracking system. It’s almost like having a crystal ball.

With an RFID system in place, retailers can have a more accurate picture of their inventory and feel comfortable knowing that they are moving their products in the right direction. Not only that, but using RFID to fill online orders from in-store inventory can actually lead to fewer stockouts, as the new level of visibility gives enterprises a better idea of which inventories are running low and when they need to be restocked. Additionally, businesses will see less of a need to implement markdown prices, as slow-moving inventory can be better distributed among the variety of retail outlets, and businesses will save on shipping and delivery costs since each retailer can now function as a distributer as well.

It’s getting more and more difficult for businesses to ignore the benefits of RFID. What managers once thought could only serve enormous supply chains with equally-enormous budgets is now allowing retailers to modernize their entire business platform. RFID is redefining what it means to have visibility into business operations, and as the scope of RFID implementation continues to expand and simplify, it’s becoming far easier for retailers to increase profits by understanding their company at a more granular level. RFID very quickly begins to pay for itself, and it certainly makes life easier for everyone from enterprise managers to the guys in the back who can now focus on greeting customers instead of counting boxes.

Smart Medication Administration with RFID

The national discussion about our healthcare system remains a hot topic, including what can be done to reduce healthcare costs while increasing the quality of patient care. As part of this equation, hospitals are constantly struggling with the task of managing inventory and budgets in order to keep costs in line. We’ve introduced the prospect of using RFID to solve many challenges in the healthcare market including cost control, and honestly, the opportunities seem limitless. Check out some of our previous posts to learn more.

In addition to improving cost control, healthcare facilities around the world are continuously improving processes related to the five “rights” of medication administration – an extremely important element of patient care. The five “rights” include:

Right patient
Right drug
Right dose
Right route
Right time

ThingMagic partner, MEPS Real-Time is taking a lead in this area by offering the RFID enabled INTELLIGUARD Automated Dispensing Cabinet!

MEPS has partnered with ThingMagic and is using the M5e embedded UHF RFID module to manage high-value, critical-dose medication dispensing and delivery to patients. By design, INTELLIGUARD’s real-time item level visibility prevents drug expiration losses and reduces unnecessary inventory and costs.

A brief case study:

Sharp Memorial Hospital is San Diego’s largest emergency and trauma center. Sharp has 5,000 products in its formulary with around $2 million in inventory at any given time. At Sharp, like other hospitals, some drugs are infrequently prescribed, but Sharp can’t risk NOT having them in stock. Previous inventory process often resulted in significant loss due to expiration and the traditional dispensing cabinets that required manual counting and barcode scanning were prone to errors.

Solution:

INTELLIGUARD Automated Dispensing Cabinets from MEPS Real-Time were put in place at Sharp Memorial Hospital. These cabinets automatically read the contents of each drawer in real time, eliminating the need for manual scans and alerting the staff of upcoming expiration dates.

Over the course of an 8 month study, Sharp confidently reduced PAR levels while eliminating fear factor buying. In addition, no medications expired unused and there were no stock-outs.

The bottom line? INTELLIGUARD Automated Dispensing Cabinets – powered by ThingMagic RFID - are a proven solution for helping pharmacists manage drug inventory while reducing costs, increasing employee efficiency, and maintaining the highest level of patient care. Check out the video case study below to learn more!

Are We Doing Better?

With 2012 almost halfway through, I figured it was time, once again, to step back and take stock of our progress – as an industry – in the ongoing battle against fraud. I thought I'd repost a piece written at the end of 2011 to see if the blog is still applicable.

My frank assessment: we still could be doing a lot better.

Sure, there are always improvements that can be made to the organizations, processes and technologies that must come together to solve a complex issue like fraud management. But I think the more important barriers our industry faces are more fundamental and structural in nature. Specifically ...

The Connection Between RFID and Social Networks Gets Deeper

Social networking channels have demonstrated again and again that they have very practical uses - both in the personal and business realms. It seems as though we pass some sort of milestone on a regular basis. Just when it seems like I’ve heard about all of the potential uses, there comes another one, quickly followed by another and another.

Our good friend and business partner, Patrick Sweeney provided another example recently about connecting the physical and online worlds, however the kinks still need to be ironed out. It’s a great idea to be able to share your Red Sox experience with your friends who aren’t in attendance, but at the 100^th anniversary game, the check-in option and being able to upload photos to Facebook via smart phones weren’t working too well that day. Apparently there was a bandwidth bottleneck; too many people trying to do the same thing in the same place. Patrick asked us to imagine a more seamless experience. Excellent idea, though I’m thinking Yankee Stadium will have this type of innovative solution deployed long before Fenway figures it out, making the baseball experience in New York even better than it already is. Sorry Boston!

In another example, RFID Journal recently reported that LifeSynk Ltd. is launching an RFID solution that would link brick-and-mortar stores, consumer products and events to the online world via social media channels. By updating a Facebook status regarding a certain product, or checking in at a certain store, retailers can offer those individuals special promotions and discounts that are targeted to their preferences. For events, people can “like” a band or song on Facebook and receive a credit for those songs on iTunes, for example. LifeSynk reports that the benefit for retailers and event organizers is greater visibility via online social networks. We have seen similar implementations where the benefits go beyond increased visibility to being able to build and achieve brand loyalty, which translates into repeat sales. Now that’s success!

A very recent and impactful example of connecting the physical and online worlds made headlines when Facebook introduced a feature for people to register as organ donors and promote their choice on the profile pages. According to a BusinessWeek story, the same day the Facebook feature was publicized, 6,000 people had registered in 22 states. Normally, less than 400 people sign up in the 22 states combined.

Businesses can no longer ignore the power of social networks and the role that RFID can play. It’s about expanding reach and influence well beyond traditional boundaries. People are connecting on a more frequent and deeper level and RFID can play a very prominent role in turning those experiences into successes. The Internet of Things just got bigger.

The State Attorney General - A New Sheriff in Town

Without question, the federal government wields considerable power over the entire banking sector. However, it is easy to forget that state attorney generals can also exert tremendous force when they choose to do so.

Arguably the position of State Attorney General is one of the best platforms available to build a political brand. Until missteps in his personal life forced Eliot Spitzer a.k.a. the Sheriff of Wall Street, to resign as Governor of New York, the rumor mill had already mentioned “Spitzer” and “President of the United States” in the same breath. Whether Spitzer stood a chance of being elected leader of the free world is anyone’s guess. However, had he done so, many would likely agree that his position as the state attorney general would represent one of the “tipping points”. It is certainly important to note that Spitzer’s popularity stemmed in large part due to his focus on protecting consumer rights by using his platform as Attorney General to target companies that the federal government seemed unable or unwilling to investigate.

Fast forward to 2012, banks are wrestling with the revised FFIEC Authentication Guidance and the specific steps that they need to take to comply. There are few “bright lines”...

Catch Them If You Can

Frank Abagnale Jr. successfully performed cons worth millions of dollars by posing as a Pan American World Airways pilot, a Georgia doctor, and a Louisiana parish prosecutor. He did all that in the 60s and his primary crime was check fraud, as documented in the biographical movie, Catch Me If You Can. Imagine what Frank could do in today’s banking environments with all its complex cross-channels.

Today, fraudster’s schemes evolve faster than Frank Abagnales ever did. This consistent evolution of fraud schemes demands that financial institutions audit their fraud detection solutions and scenarios on a fairly regular basis.

Performing a solution audit would determine the level of effectiveness of your institution's fraud coverage. It would identify additional areas of coverage that could be achieved by fully exploiting the existing data, as well as adding new data sources to improve current detection. It would also help prioritize recommendations and ...

Fighting Fraud in Canada

Most people who have been on the good side of the Financial Crimes business know – it is easy to become cynical and suspicious of almost everyone. I guess when you are looking for criminal activity all day, you are supposed to have a 'glass half empty’ approach. To my surprise, I have found that many fraud personnel I’ve met are very optimistic…about catching fraud, that is. And, after meeting with several of them last month, I am even more aware of what a collaborative effort fighting fraud needs to be.

At the beginning of the month, Memento had our inaugural Canadian User Group meeting. Almost 30 users from our Canadian customers came together at the Toronto Board of Trade to network with their peers, discuss recent fraud events and ...

Spring Cleaning Your Fraud Scenarios

Spring has arrived, which means it’s time to put away all the winter stuff and make space for what you’ll need for the new season. Instead of just cleaning out your closets, why not take a fresh look at your organization’s fraud management system and ‘de-clutter’ your scenarios?

Reviewing your list of scenarios is important to ensure that your fraud team is focusing on the highest priority scenarios that impact your bank, and that you are getting maximum value from your enterprise detection system. Fraud schemes and schemers are constantly changing, and enterprise monitoring systems need to keep pace with new trends, government regulations, and loopholes in your bank’s systems.

The first step is to take stock of what you have, and gauge its value. If you are not already maintaining a scenario inventory, consider developing a tracking system that includes the following:

• A clear, written description of the fraud scenario appropriate for business users (a.k.a. the “English description”)
• A description of each of the data fields required to run ...

More Takeaways from the BAI Conference

Notes from Memento's Michael Wlodyka, Fraud Consultant, and Matt Doremus, Sr. Solutions Architect

Michael Wlodyka, Memento Fraud Consultant, on Reputational Risk

On day 2 of the BAI Payments Connect 2012 conference, I had the opportunity to attend a very interesting presentation by John Carlson, EVP for fraud prevention and cyber security at BITS, entitled ‘Hardening’ Payment Systems for the Next Generation. In his talk, John highlighted the fact that trust and reputation are two of the most valuable assets that financial institutions have in retaining existing customers and acquiring new clients.

Whether deserved or not, the persistent threats of account takeover, identity theft, check, card, ACH, wire, and mortgage fraud, along with continued insider and elder abuse can lead to a perception of insecurity. In order to effectively combat the increased risk of new channels, players, and products, there is a need for cooperation between and amongst financial institutions and their providers ...

Notes from 2012 BAI Payments Connect

Every year, Memento attends the BAI Payments conference to learn the latest trends in payments and fraud as well as connect with attendees, many of whom are our customers and partners. This year’s conference focused on three key areas: emerging payments, payments fraud, and check processing. Being part of the team that designs and develops the fraud detection and management software for Memento, I was very interested in learning more about the new and emerging payment channels, where FIs stand with their FFIEC/layered security strategy, and, of course, where FIs see the biggest need for innovation.

Day 1 Highlights

Payment innovation and mobile banking were central conference themes. The mobile phone is trending as a preferred channel (“top of wallet”) for small dollar payments. Banks are racing to figure out how this changes their business model and product offerings.

Some view peer-to-peer (P2P) payments as a promising new revenue stream. As a quick definition, a P2P payment uses an email address or mobile number to identify the payment beneficiary. (Examples: send a gift, settle the dinner tab, payback for a shared household expense.) Everyone agrees that P2P is emerging and malleable with flexible audiences and flexible delivery options. The offerings will most certainly also enable P2G (person to group, e.g. pay soccer team), P2B (person to business, pay small service provider), B2P etc.

Benefits for consumers:
- Convenience, convenience, convenience. Payments can be initiated anytime, anywhere.
- Timing of payments may be more immediate.

Opportunities for Financial Institutions:
- Strengthen relationship with customers and ...

The ‘Cost of Doing Business’ Trap

I was reading a comment on a Memento blog post, “2011 Fraud Trends – 3 Key Takeaways”, and it got me to thinking about what “cost effective” really means. In this case, it’s really about the cost of doing business.

It is not uncommon to take the position that fraud is “a cost of doing business”. When we view it from that perspective, we need to consider the total cost of doing business when it comes to fraud.

With regard to having insurance policies cover fraud losses, I am curious to know what exactly does this insurance cover? What are the deductibles? What other non-loss impacts does a fraud event have on the bank? Take into account customer loss, higher operational costs for customer service, reputational risk (that’s not just your reputation with ...

Ramnit, Facebook, and Password Management – Oh My!

I was reading an article about the Ramnit worm a few weeks back and a few things struck me about it. First of all, this worm is “old” technology – at least in the cyber war sense – that is evolving. It reminds me of a blog I wrote a while ago on polymorphism and the Zeus Trojan. At that time, I thought a common misconception was that once you find malware and take action against it you’re safe. It wasn’t so then and it isn’t so now.

Interestingly in this case, Trusteer, a provider of cybercrime prevention solutions, was the first to discover Ramnit’s merger with Zeus in August 2011. That tidbit combined with another point in the article about how Ramnit is being used to attack Facebook credentials is bad news. The article provided this quote to point out the danger: “Dave Jevans of the Anti-Phishing Working Group says stealing credentials from social-networking sites is big business. “We have seen...

The Data Mining Debate

It goes without saying that banks have an abundance of data. It is the job of the fraud analysts and investigators to sift through various bits of data to find anomalies and resolve fraudulent activity. These fraud subject-matter-experts usually can develop their own ad-hoc queries to find the information they are looking for. Surely, with access to disparate data and the ability to run queries, they can uncover fraud without deploying someone else’s software….right?

Most of the time, the answer is a resounding “no”. Very few banks have ...

A Holistic Approach to Fraud and Risk

Bank Technology News (BTN) ran an article on the first of the year entitled “9 Trends Reshaping Risk Software”, and Trend 8, “The bringing together of different risk systems”, caught my eye (being a fraud guy). My observation over the years is that centralized / consolidated vs. decentralized/ siloed is a cyclical thing. The idea of consolidating and centralizing keeps coming back, so that tells me it is generally considered to be a good idea. One explanation for the cycle swinging the other way might be the technical issues associated with implementing the consolidated model. A common data model goes a long way toward resolving many technical issues and systems that run disparate solutions on a single data model are promising for the consolidated approach.

The Illusion of Declining Account Takeover Attempts

In a recent Bank Info Security article, Account Takeover: Better or Worse?, Tracy Kitten interviews Doug Johnson, Vice President of Risk Management Policy for the American Bankers Association to get his expert opinion on the state of account takeovers and identity theft.

ACH fraud may be defined as many different fraud types including account takeover and payments fraud. Because there are no statistics on the total ACH losses for 2011, there may be the illusion that losses are down. In my opinion, the trend may seem that ACH fraud is decreasing due to tighter controls, but when I speak with industry colleagues, I tend to hear the opposite.

Flower Shop Fraud

Committing bank fraud is easy when you have help on the inside. That’s what the prosecutors in the UK think happened in a $2m fraud scheme involving high net worth accounts. Between July and September 2008, a gang lead by Neil Wynne targeted Barclays Bank branches throughout the middle of England. Prosecutors believe that the gang had help from a bank employee as they had an uncanny knack for picking the best accounts to target. They also had no problem overcoming the bank’s security procedures. They just can’t prove that an employee was involved – at least not yet.

Here’s the scheme… With a fake passport in hand, one member of the gang pretended to be the owner of an existing, well-funded, Barclay’s Bank account. A second member of the gang posed as the accountholder’s partner.

Once the new account was opened, the gang proceeded to ...

2011 Fraud Trends – 3 Key Takeaways

At year’s end, I like to take a step back and assess the main fraud trends I’ve seen and heard when speaking with our customers. Not only have we seen a lot of movement in the ACH area due to the FFIEC Supplement released this year, but there also have been some major events in the news this year that have driven action in fraud prevention measures overall. There are a few trends, in particular, that stand out to me more than others.

1. Internal Fraud is Here to Stay: The interest in Internal Fraud continues to be high, and without a proactive monitoring system in place, banks are at higher risk of being exposed to theft from their own employees. Some of the more common fraud strategies in Internal Fraud include ...

Year-End Transaction Volume

Depending on which news report you read, sales on “Black Friday” and “Cyber Monday” were considerably higher than last year. What does that mean for the bank fraud investigator? More transactions to wade through! Right about now, bank fraud departments around the United States are working overtime combing through billions of transactions. Unfortunately, when volume increases, so too does the volume of fraud attempts.

When transaction volumes spike, any weaknesses in a bank’s fraud detection landscape are often magnified. That’s what the fraudster wants. The more stress the bank’s fraud department is under, the more likely it will be that fraud transactions will slip through.

You can’t do that much to control the volume, but you can capture the lessons learned when you and your team are pushed to the breaking point. Consider the following questions ...

The Value of Integration and Collaboration

I recently attended part of the Orbograph user group meeting where I participated in a panel discussing the value in combining forces in the fight against fraud. The panel was moderated by Jodi Pratt, well known in fraud-fighting circles. Speaking with me on the panel was Carl Bortol of Data Support Systems. Both Carl and I represent companies that have partnerships with Orbograph. On the panel, we discussed two levels of working together, integration and collaboration.

Integration
This level focuses on integrating the fraud detection system into the rest of the bank’s systems in an operational sense. This includes core systems like DDA and CIS, and transaction processing systems like Exceptions...

Raising the Stakes for Internal Fraud

Earlier this week, Bank Info Security released an article on the Computershare civil suit against a former employee for stealing company information and shareholder data. The piece discusses the potential impact such a suit might have on the financial services industry, and I was able to contribute my two cents about the matter.

My opinion is, that in the case of data breaches and insider fraud, legal action against employees is historically rare. Most of the time these incidents are handled as internal matters; the exceptions have only been the worst or largest breaches and fraud schemes.

But, we do see a shift in how firms are approaching internal fraud. A handful of high profile internal data breaches and fraud cases (e.g., SocGen, UBS, Madoff ...

Can We Do Better?

With 2012 almost halfway through, I figured it was a good time to step back and take stock of our progress – as an industry – in the ongoing battle against fraud. A frank assessment: we could be doing a lot better.

The Boiling Frog
Our industry’s slow reaction to the growing, morphing fraud problem makes me think of the boiling frog phenomenon. If you haven’t heard of it ...

“Getting it Right” at the NACHA Mega Meeting

Last week, ACH payments and fraud prevention professionals attended the NACHA Council Mega Meeting held on the waterfront in Boston, MA. In the sessions related to quicker payment processing, the overall sentiment was that banks need to do a better job of monitoring to manage the increased exposure. Two of the hottest topics were Expedited Processing and Settlement and, of course, the new supplement to the 2005 FFIEC Guidance.

Expedited Processing and Settlement (EPS): As anyone who is involved in ACH payments knows, NACHA is proposing a new payment option called EPS, which would allow ...

Saving Trees, One SAR e-Filing at a Time

In September, FinCEN released for comment a proposal to make electronic filing of SARs mandatory as of June 30, 2012. FinCEN’s e-filing system has been available since October 2002, and about 85% of BSA reports are currently filed electronically.

If you were unaware of this...

Letter from Client Services

It’s now been three months since I joined Memento, and I want to take the opportunity to say hello, communicate some of the exciting changes which are taking place, and offer my perspective on what you can expect to see from us going forward.

Perhaps I should start with what hasn’t changed. What hasn’t changed is Memento’s commitment to, and passion for, helping its customers detect, prevent and manage fraud. This dedication spans the products we build, the consulting services we deliver, and the ongoing relationships we develop. Our goal is to help you successfully deal with your ever-changing fraud-related challenges, and ultimately enable you to reduce losses and exposure to risk.

What has changed is how we accomplish this. For starters, we recently ...

Video Search and Discovery and the Consumer’s Love for Entertainment

Ben Weinberger

CEO & Co-Founder

Posted by ben on Oct 6th, 2011 09:02 AM

Today’s video viewers have a multiplicity of options for watching their favorite shows and movies. Pay-TV, video on demand, blu-ray and online streaming just to name a few. And there is proof – from viewers and content owners – that viewers are taking advantage of this explosion of video options. Just read the following: