Cameron Syed, Vertical Sales Engineering Manager EMEA and Mark Thomson, Retail Strategy Director EMEA at Zebra Technologies share exclusive insights with ISJ.
How is Zebra helping teams gain greater real-time visibility of people, assets and operations?
Cameron Syed (CS): There are a few things that we’re doing in relation to people, assets and operations. It starts with ensuring that frontline workers are digitally connected.
One of the solutions that we have in our portfolio is the WS301 wearable computer. The idea behind issuing one of these devices to an end user is to provide them with a multi-purpose solution.
From a physical security perspective, one of the benefits for a frontline worker is that, when the device is worn on their lapel, it can work alongside solutions such as a body-worn camera.
This can act as a deterrent, but also as a way to record any physical incidents involving frontline workers – for example, in a retail environment – at the click of a button.
The device comes with a built-in duress button, so it can be pressed discreetly, providing workers with an additional layer of safety.
If they have a device and they’re digitally connected, that same device can be used as a way to communicate with their colleagues.
From a communication and collaboration perspective, it enables them to receive important bulletins, incident updates and even help them reduce the amount of time it takes to serve their customers on the shop floor.
Mark Thomson (MT): We know from the statistics in the industry – when you look at British Retail Consortium and more – that incidences of abuse have increased dramatically over the last couple of years and that turnover of staff is particularly high, heading just under 60%.
Effectively, if you recruited 100 people, then you’d have less than 50% of them left by the end of the year.
A lot of that is to do with how they feel about retail, and how they feel supported or protected by their employers.
Retailers want to do something about this. Adding tech is a way to not only provide digital information, but also just to make staff feel connected and protected.
We are seeing an expansion of that: whether it’s retailers buying body-worn cameras or providing multitasking mobile devices and lapel worn devices so that staff can complete operational tasks whilst feeling supported.
CS: We’ve got a multi-layered approach. At the foundation, we’ve got the Zebra Device Guardian suite, which is all about ensuring secure log-on access through multifactor authentication methods.
Leveraging single sign-on, biometrics and NFC are all about making sure the right people have access to the right devices.
Moreover, it is about providing customers with traceability on device usage and pre-empting scenarios where devices go missing or get lost. We’re able to provide a means so that they can go and recover those assets if that happens.
On top of that, we have LifeGuard, which is our software security support model.
This delivers critical updates as frequently as every 30 days. The idea behind this is about empowering customers so that they can deploy LifeGuard patches that contain bug fixes and feature enhancements to the frontline to make sure that both devices and the fleet are secure.
Moreover, we’re able to provide intelligent information about those assets, giving operational and IT stakeholders real-time asset visibility into the health of their estate.
With our VisibilityIQ™ Foresight platform, we can guide customers in making business-critical decisions by surfacing the meaningful data that comes from our devices – this is available in the user-friendly dashboard that’s purpose built for IT and OT teams.
We also offer Zebra Mx, which is a communications framework that sits on our devices.
This is a common interface for managing the capabilities and behaviours of Zebra Android devices in an enterprise environment. What does this mean for the customer?
It’s about ensuring that you’re not having unauthorised apps being copied to the device or any data removed that shouldn’t be.
You’re inhibiting any settings changes in the field, configuring devices to only connect to certain networks through certificate-based connections. Ensuring a consistent end user experience is key.
MT: There’s no single approach to security that wins in all cases. Having a multifaceted approach is key because IT teams spend a lot of time and effort securing endpoints – and they’ve used a lot of tools to do it.
However, many have almost forgotten about the devices that are being walked around their store, used for inventories, for pricing and more.
I think that today, particularly with the number of cyber-attacks we’ve seen, that is becoming a higher priority for retailers and other industries.
Zebra takes this seriously, and we take a strategic approach to how we build security levels.
What role do technologies such as RFID, machine vision and real-time location services play in improving situational awareness and incident response?
MT: We live in a world where almost everything now is a sensor of sorts.
How does a retailer understand exactly what’s happening in their business? Is it all about some sort of wireless communication from a mobile computer?
Nope. It’s about knowing what’s happening to the products that are in their business that they’re trying to sell, which may be tagged with RFID.
We’ve invested in a number of computer vision companies over the last few years as we are seeing increased use of that technology, for example, for checking the condition of a box that’s just arrived and is being delivered to the store.
We can take that tech all the way to the checkout, using computer vision to be able to see if the product or barcode that’s just been scanned at the point of sale correlates with the product on the scanner.
It can also be used to perform validation cheques.
From there, we can add other technologies like RFID, whilst also using other technologies such as AI, which can look for patterns.
For instance, what if the user is seeing too many voids or overrides happening on certain tills in certain stores?
It is all about sensing what’s happening and using other tools to analyse what has been seen. In the best environments, this results in not having to send reports, dashboards or spreadsheets to store managers, but sending actions.
That’s where we see demand for our task management solutions as well, because it takes that previous data and puts it down to an actual task in the hands of the relevant staff members.
How is Zebra approaching the challenge of securing the data generated by its devices while ensuring reliable access for frontline personnel?
CS: Good question. There are a number of reasons why securing data in retail is crucial.
I think the obvious one is to protect the business from disruptions and financial loss. But also, I think consumer spending habits are changing. This makes securing customer information more crucial than ever.
At Zebra, we believe in giving the tools to our customers so that they get their out-of-box experience to secure, optimise, deploy and manage their estate – that’s driven through something we call Mobility DNA.
This is a suite of software products we provide to our customers to deploy and manage their estates.
In addition to the tools we provide, our multi-layered approach means we integrate security measures during the development of our endpoints; ISO accreditations ensure our development processes are rigorously assessed.
We believe it’s important to establish a foundation of trust the moment you unbox your device, which is why Zebra integrates Secure Boot across its portfolio of Android devices.
This protects enterprise-grade operations from low-level digital threats.
In addition, it’s essential to be able to control what an endpoint can or cannot do.
That’s why Mx can be paired with our Enterprise Home Screen, which can lock a device down and make sure only the business line applications are accessible by the end users.
Security isn’t a journey. It’s an ongoing commitment. One of the main things that we do is provide support through monthly patches for our devices, and that goes up to ten years.
In instances where devices have been more popular with our customers, we’ve extended the lifecycle as well. We’re always willing to support our customers, and we provide a multi-layered approach.
MT: Zebra doesn’t own or manage the data that is on those devices. It’s very much for the retailers and other businesses to do that.
Our job is to provide a suite of tools to allow them to do that and to manage those devices, get visibility and feel confident they can secure and manage their data.
It’s about having a suite of tools that are simple, easy to access and easy to understand.
What trends do you believe will have the greatest impact on enterprise security? What advice would you give to those looking to strengthen their posture?
MT: I was with a Chief Executive earlier this year and they made a statement to me which hit home.
Their view was that until the last couple of years, cybersecurity was the domain of IT teams.
It was trusted by the business that they would make it happen. It is now at a board level because the impact of cyber-attacks is significant. The tools bad actors have available to them, including elements of AI, are only going to increase and get smarter. Businesses have to take this seriously.
My advice is to think of mobile devices as potential access points into your system, and secure them in the same way you would secure desktops and laptops.
Also, build a strategy and work with a technology partner that gives you the tools you need.
CS: Move away from the mindset that once you deploy – that’s the end. Security is a journey and you need to build a plan. It’s not just a set-and-forget task.
You have to keep building on top of your plan to remain as secure as everything around it. There are many benefits of staying up to date.
To find out more information, please visit: www.zebra.com
Engineering Manager EMEA at Zebra Technologies