John Johnson joined the DC Velocity team in March 2004. A veteran business journalist, John has over a dozen years of experience covering the supply chain field, including time as chief editor of Warehousing Management. In addition, he has covered the venture capital community and previously was a sports reporter covering professional and collegiate sports in the Boston area. John served as senior editor and chief editor of DC Velocity until April 2008.
The next time you pull up to the drive-through window at McDonald's, you might want to reach into your pocket for some good-old fashioned cash. The "swipe free" credit card you've gotten accustomed to using to pay for a Big Mac and fries might actually be putting your personal information at risk.
In tests conducted this fall, researchers from the RFID Consortium for Security and Privacy were able to hack into the information stored on first-generation "swipe free" credit cards that use RFID technology. Though the information is supposedly encrypted, the group reported that all of the cards it tested revealed important personal information whose disclosure could lead to identity fraud and theft.
Nearly 20 million of the RFID-enabled cards have been issued by credit card companies like American Express and MasterCard, and are now being used by consumers at a growing number of retail outlets, including CVS drug stores and McDonald's.
Researchers from the consortium, which includes members from both industry and academia, found problems with all of the cards they tested, although they tested fewer than two dozen cards. "Every single RFID credit card and debit card that I have seen in my lab has revealed at the least the full user name and card expiration date, and the vast majority also revealed the full credit card number," says Tom Heydt-Benjamin, a graduate student at the University of Massachusetts and one of the study's architects.
Because the information is transmitted via radio waves, the cards can be read through a wallet, an item of clothing or an envelope. To illustrate how easily personal data could be skimmed from cards, Heydt-Benjamin outlined a scenario in which somebody posing as a campaign volunteer walked the streets stuffing fliers into mailboxes. It would be a simple matter for that person to use a concealed RFID reader to skim information from any credit cards that happened to be in those mailboxes, he said.
Privacy advocates called for credit card issuers to recall all of the cards in question and replace them with more secure versions. The group Consumers Against Supermarket Privacy Invasion and Numbering (CASPIAN) advised consumers to remove the credit cards from their wallets immediately and request an RFID-free replacement card. The group is cautioning consumers not to mail the cards back because of the risk that their personal information might be exposed.
Although he acknowledges that RFIDenabled cards have security flaws that must be addressed, Heydt-Benjamin says that when it comes to the overall risk of identity theft, "leaky" cards pose only a minor risk. Practices like phishing, he says, represent a much bigger threat to individual consumers.
"I hope this doesn't set the whole technology back," says Heydt-Benjamin. "We firmly believe that RFID is not a dangerous technology. Our research is about bringing appropriate security and privacy mechanisms into the RFID world. Our message is that while this issue is something that very much should be part of the RFID privacy debate, we don't see it as indicating that RFID technology is an evil or dangerous technology."
all RFID, all the time
If you're going to tag 65 products, you might as well tag them all. That at least appears to be Hewlett-Packard's thinking. The consumer electronics giant is considering the monumental step of applying RFID tags to all of the products it makes. Right now, it is tagging 65 product SKUs that it supplies to Wal-Mart, Target and Best Buy in compliance with the retailers' mandates. But company executives say HP has an internal study under way to determine if it would be more efficient to just tag everything.
Last year, HP used about 6 million RFID tags. That number is expected to reach 10 million by the end of 2006, making HP one of the largest consumers of RFID tags.
HP, which started running RFID pilots four years ago, now has 34 facilities that are RFID-enabled. The company is already doing some item-level tagging for products like computer printers that ship one product to a case.
Supply chain planning (SCP) leaders working on transformation efforts are focused on two major high-impact technology trends, including composite AI and supply chain data governance, according to a study from Gartner, Inc.
"SCP leaders are in the process of developing transformation roadmaps that will prioritize delivering on advanced decision intelligence and automated decision making," Eva Dawkins, Director Analyst in Gartner’s Supply Chain practice, said in a release. "Composite AI, which is the combined application of different AI techniques to improve learning efficiency, will drive the optimization and automation of many planning activities at scale, while supply chain data governance is the foundational key for digital transformation.”
Their pursuit of those roadmaps is often complicated by frequent disruptions and the rapid pace of technological innovation. But Gartner says those leaders can accelerate the realized value of technology investments by facilitating a shift from IT-led to business-led digital leadership, with SCP leaders taking ownership of multidisciplinary teams to advance business operations, channels and products.
“A sound data governance strategy supports advanced technologies, such as composite AI, while also facilitating collaboration throughout the supply chain technology ecosystem,” said Dawkins. “Without attention to data governance, SCP leaders will likely struggle to achieve their expected ROI on key technology investments.”
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
Serious inland flooding and widespread power outages are likely to sweep across Florida and other Southeast states in coming days with the arrival of Hurricane Helene, which is now predicted to make landfall Thursday evening along Florida’s northwest coast as a major hurricane, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
While the most catastrophic landfall impact is expected in the sparsely-population Big Bend area of Florida, it’s not only sea-front cities that are at risk. Since Helene is an “unusually large storm,” its flooding, rainfall, and high winds won’t be limited only to the Gulf Coast, but are expected to travel hundreds of miles inland, the weather service said. Heavy rainfall is expected to begin in the region even before the storm comes ashore, and the wet conditions will continue to move northward into the southern Appalachians region through Friday, dumping storm total rainfall amounts of up to 18 inches. Specifically, the major flood risk includes the urban areas around Tallahassee, metro Atlanta, and western North Carolina.
In addition to its human toll, the storm could exert serious business impacts, according to the supply chain mapping and monitoring firm Resilinc. Those will be largely triggered by significant flooding, which could halt oil operations, force mandatory evacuations, restrict ports, and disrupt air traffic.
While the storm’s track is currently forecast to miss the critical ports of Miami and New Orleans, it could still hurt operations throughout the Southeast agricultural belt, which produces products like soybeans, cotton, peanuts, corn, and tobacco, according to Everstream Analytics.
That widespread footprint could also hinder supply chain and logistics flows along stretches of interstate highways I-10 and I-75 and on regional rail lines operated by Norfolk Southern and CSX. And Hurricane Helene could also likely impact business operations by unleashing power outages, deep flooding, and wind damage in northern Florida portions of Georgia, Everstream Analytics said.
Before the storm had even touched Florida soil, recovery efforts were already being launched by humanitarian aid group the American Logistics Aid Network (ALAN). In a statement on Wednesday, the group said it is urging residents in the storm's path across the Southeast to heed evacuation notices and safety advisories, and reminding members of the logistics community that their post-storm help could be needed soon. The group will continue to update its Disaster Micro-Site with Hurricane Helene resources and with requests for donated logistics assistance, most of which will start arriving within 24 to 72 hours after the storm’s initial landfall, ALAN said.