As promised, I’m posting this as a follow-up to this year’s NRF show in NYC.  It is going to be a short post as there really isn’t a lot to talk about from the show, particularly in terms of security or compliance.
The big news this year is that the show didn’t suck.  Someone told me that it was the best attended show (by retailers) in the last 5 years.  I’m not sure if that’s an official ruling from the NRF, but I can certainly attest to the fact that traffic …

I haven’t posted anything forever!!!
Bad Alex!
Well, I’m heading out to another NRF this weekend and I promise that I’ll post something either from the show or shortly thereafter.  It might have something to do with how poorly security is represented at the show (other than at least 25 ‘Instant PCI’ offerings and Trustwave throwing money around…), but we’ll see.
If anyone out there is actually going to be at NRF and is interested in connecting, please let me know - alex.crittenden@yahoo.com - and we’ll figure something out.
Thanks and Happy New Year!
Related …

I haven’t posted about NRF as often as I wanted to but that was because from a work perspective I actually had far more to do than I expected and from a show perspective there was nothing all that impressive to see. I will do a summary post on what I did see at the show but that’s why I haven’t done anything yet. Thanks.
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The first event of NRF - the ‘reception’ was hosted by Wincor-Nixdorf at the Gotham Hall (very cool place on Broadway and 36th) and was interesting.  I’m really concerned about the attendance at NRF this year and, ultimately, the relevancy given the economy and the state of affairs within the retail sector.  The place tonight was pretty packed, but it seemed to lack cohesion.  I realize that this is a sort of strange statement considering that I’m talking about a party, but previous years seemed to have a sense of …

As I mentioned in a previous post, NRF is coming up and, for those of us that have been in the retail technology space for a number of years, this is a big deal.  It’s the one show that tends to draw important retailers and important executives.
With that in mind, I’m going to be doing a couple of things as NRF gets closer:

Posting on some topics of importance for 2009 in retail security
Posting to tools, articles, and other areas of particular interest to retailers that are getting ready for 2009
I’m …

I ended up missing NRF’s Big Show in NYC in 2008 and it was a little disconcerting. Prior to this year, I had attended 10 straight shows and, although the memories of the cold (it is always the coldest week of the year) and lugging booth equipment for blocks weren’t the best, I actually enjoyed going. It gives you a good indication of what the industry is going to be focused on for the upcoming year and what the vendor cosmos is up to…
This year (2009), I am …

This is an article from March of this year that was published in RIS news. I realize it’s a little old, but I just stumbled across it…
PCI May Never Stop Hackers: Time to Rethink Security | News | RIS News: Business/Technology Insights for Retail, Supermarket Executives.
This article, in my opinion is both good and bad - first of all, it points out that PCI is not the end-all-be-all for security.
That’s good - it’s important for retailers to understand that PCI is just a ’snap-shot in time’ check on credit-card …