[SecurityRatty] tag: friday

Stampede Death at Wal-Mart

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:12:00 +0000

The death of a Wal-Mart employee on Black Friday in New York should never have been allowed to happen.

The Police are said to be reviewing tapes to see if they can identify who was responsible for trampling the poor man to death. What will that achieve? Obviously it was not done on purpose. The findings are bound to result in an "accidental death" determination.

Getting back to; who is responsible? I think that is quite clear. Wal-Mart has to accept responsibility. UNLESS...they really did hire an outside security company and the employees of that company did such a poor job organizing that mob of "door busters", that they lost control of the situation.

One thing is a given. The family of the employee who lost his life is bound to bring a civil law suit against Wal-Mart. If I were them, the first thing I would look to find out would be who(if anyone)was providing security on Thanksgiving night outside of the front door?

Unfortunately, many clients do not take the function of security very seriously and they delegate the responsibility to those with no security training or experience. We have consulted for clients at arenas and found that ordinary ushers will be given a fluorescent vest or jacket with "SECURITY" written on the back and asked to provide security. This is a libility claim waiting to be filed.

If Wal-Mart did in fact outsource their security to an outside company, was the company allowed to provide an adequate number of officers to ensure that shoppers lined up in an orderly fashion? One security officer to a couple of hundred people is another liability suit waiting to be filed.

Next, they should be looking at the training that the security officers (Wal-Mart better hope that shelve stockers were not given the task)receieved. Because it was Thanksgiving night, there is the possibility that the company couldn't get anybody else to work and used untrained and inexperienced personnel. If that turns out to be the case, hopefully the company was legal and had adequate insurance coverage.

Whatever happens regarding a civil law suit, one thing will remain unchanged. A man lost his life in an incident that should have been prevented. It is obvious that not everything was done to ensure the safety of the shoppers who traditonally lined up to get the best bargains when the store opened on "Black Friday".

Whether it was Wal-Mart or the security company who may have been hired to prevent this very incident from happening - somebody failed to do their job. Whichever one it was, they should step up to the plate and apologize to the grieving family for letting them down.

Friday Squid Blogging: Cooking a Humboldt Squid

Fri, 28 Nov 2008 13:09:02 +0000

I thought that large squid were too chewy and not very tasty, but this person cooked a 30-pound Humboldt squid.

Symantec sees spike in dangerous Microsoft attacks

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Symantec is warning of a sharp jump in online attacks that appear to be targeting a recently patched bug in Microsoft's Windows operating system, an analysis that some other security companies disputed Friday.

Friday Squid Blogging: Preserving Giant Squid

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 13:20:18 +0000

At the Smithsonian:

At the centerof the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History's gleaming new Sant Ocean Hall lies a preserved giant female squid -- the arresting, spineless star among the vibrant exhibition's animal specimens. Tentacles menacingly outstretched and seemingly frozen in time, the 24-foot squid embodies humans' fascination with the briny deep. But this squid also symbolizes something else: an ongoing experiment in the chemistry of preservation, without which the Smithsonian's new exhibition would not have been possible.

Also note the terrorism tie-in:

To create the exhibit, the Smithsonian had to work around post-9/11 rules restricting flammable materials, while maximizing the lifelike appearance of the squid for public display. They turned not to formalin or ethanol, but to a new fluorinated chemical called Novec, developed by 3M.

If we give up our preserved giant squids, then surely the terrorists have won.

Symantec sees spike in dangerous Microsoft attacks

Fri, 21 Nov 2008 02:00:00 +0000

Friday Squid Blogging: Vintage Squid Can Labels

Fri, 14 Nov 2008 13:41:29 +0000

Mostly sardines, but some squid.

Apple plays catch-up, adds anti-fraud safeguard to Safari

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Apple Friday added anti-phishing protection to Safari, the last major browser to receive the feature that blocks known identity-stealing sites. The company also patched 11 security bugs in the program, the bulk of them specific to the Microsoft Windows version.

Lenovo Introduces Protection and Data Recovery Services

Thu, 13 Nov 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Lenovo Friday introduced two new service offerings -- PC protection service that insures Lenovo notebooks from accidental damage and Data Recovery Service that rescues users' data from a faulty hard disk.

Thousands hit in broad Web hack

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 21:00:00 +0000

Hackers have launched a massive Web hacking campaign, putting malicious links on as many as 10,000 servers, security vendor Kaspersky Lab warned Friday.

Friday Squid Blogging: Squid USB Drive

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 13:22:02 +0000

Nice.