Evan Schuman

The retail industry is traditionally slow to adopt new technology and new payment methods, but once some retail leaders get comfortable with the idea, it can snowball into a very rapid trend. Its happened with self-checkout, buy online and pickup-in-store and—most recently—with contactless payment. Are alternatives to credit cards next? Although Visa, MasterCard and American […]

With all the investigations surrounding the massive TJX Companies data breach—including class action lawsuits, dozens of state attorney general probes, congressional inquiries and a Federal Trade Commission investigation, to name just a few—there are only two constituencies that the $16 billion retailer cares about: Wall Street and its customers. Indeed, that short list can be […]

Some of the largest e-commerce chains have suddenly started to embrace nontraditional payment methods, with one analyst group finding a 267 percent increase in such acceptance in four months. The survey was completed by e-commerce consultancy Brulant, which released the full results from both its October 2006 and February 2007 surveys. Brulant in October looked […]

For years, retailers have been told that if they merely abide by common sense security procedures—dont permit obvious passwords, check audit logs regularly and patch software immediately—theyd be in good security shape. Although there is no doubt that is still sound counsel, security consultants are describing a new breed of professional cyber thieves out there, […]

The latest news about the TJX data breach—including that the thieves doubly circumvented encryption, both by having a copy of the software key and by grabbing data right before it could be encrypted—is sending shockwaves through the retail security world, as it should. But the latest revelations also start to put TJX into a new […]

The massive data breach at $16 billion retailer TJX involved someone apparently armed with the chains encryption key, but it might not have been needed as the cyber-thief was accessing data during the card-approval process before it was encrypted. These are among the latest details in what is almost certainly the worst retail data breach […]

As Borders executives discussed the various reasons they severed their multi-year partnership with Amazon.com on Thursday, the most critical was the least expected: taxes. As a pure online play, Amazon.com was an ideal long-term partner for Borders as there was no physical store conflict. But as the years passed, that initial advantage quickly turned into […]

Oracles lawsuit against SAP, although fascinating in its detailed tracking of who took what and when, is so much pure Oracle. This would be like Microsoft suing a small software company and accusing them—with great indignation—of not treating their partners with courtesy and respect. Based on the full text of the accusation portion of the […]

Information stolen from the systems of massive retailer TJX was being used fraudulently in November 2006 in an $8 million gift card scheme, one month before TJX officials said they learned of the breach, according to Florida law enforcement officials. The significance of this new TJX detail—discovered as Florida authorities issued arrest warrants for 10 […]

The data breach case of $16 billion retailer TJX is crawling along, with this week delivering to us a handful of pseudo-developments. Those are things that sound like information, but examined closely tell us little new. The Federal Trade Commission, for example, confirmed that it has been investigating TJX, but wouldnt say what it has […]

As Connecticut state investigators continue to look into the Best Buy dual Web site situation, former Best Buy employees and customers are telling stories that question how accidental some of the confusion was. The controversy stems from Best Buy giving employees access to two different—but visually identical—sites for them to show customers. One of the […]

The nations largest retailer is taking the shop-online-pick-up-in-store option to the next logical point, allowing its Web site to leverage the brick-and-mortar chains logistical army. Wal-Mart on March 6 began the first phase of its Site to Store rollout, where consumers can get purchase an item online and pick up the merchandise at a local […]