Despite tight budgets preventing retail and consumer (R+C) executives from updating security programs and causing them to fall behind, many remain confident in their business practices, according to findings from PwC's new report, "R+C Insights: Changing the Game." The report surveyed more than 1,100 senior R+C industry executives and found that regardless of this lag in technological advances, adversaries are becoming ever more sophisticated, breaching the defenses of business ecosystems and leaving reputational, financial and competitive damage in their wake.

Pirate attacks off the Somali coast have declined by more than 54 percent, leading to a softening of insurance premiums for the global shipping community but raising controversy surrounding the use of onboard private armed security contractors, according to the International Maritime Bureau's Piracy Reporting Centre.

In a case that has potentially significant consequences for NFC and RFID applications, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission is cracking down on so-called "phone home" technologies used by computer rental companies to monitor consumer behavior. When contemplating the use of any technology that provides use, location or other information about a product, retailers should be careful to ensure consumers know - or are at least able to know - exactly what the product is doing once they leave the store.

No matter who gets elected president next month, the United States economy in 2013 will have only tepid growth. Does that sound like this year all over again? Yes, indeed.

System improvement is much more than problem solving. It is dual-staged, having two dependent parts that must be handled with the same enthusiasm to ensure success. The first segment is concerned with problem identification and solution finding, while the second segment deals with realizing a corrective action.