Smokey Bones Bar & Fire Grill has announced a partnership to bring Ziosk tabletop tablets to all 65 Smokey Bones restaurants located across 16 states, primarily in the Eastern U.S. The rollout is expected to be completed by the end of February 2015.
Ziosk also announced that its current deployed footprint of over 65,000 Ziosk® tablets in more than 1,250 restaurants is impacting over $4 billion in checks per year. Ziosk is the industry leader, commanding 95 percent of the installed tabletop tablet market.
Smokey Bones is a full-service bar and fire-grill restaurant specializing in authentic, slow-smoked barbeque favorites, featuring Wings, Ribs, Burgers and Chicken, all in a fun, energetic atmosphere known for friendly, attentive service. The Ziosk® 7-inch tablet will be conveniently displayed on each restaurant table, enhancing Smokey Bones’ hospitality experience and giving guests the ability to interactively peruse its menu of American slow-smoked, barbeque favorites and specials, as well as order beverages, appetizers and desserts at their leisure.
The Ziosk® tablet gives guests control over their dining experience, helps restaurants improve their service and profits, increases tips for servers, and offers a unique and valuable way for advertisers to reach their audiences. The Ziosk® tablet also allows guests to play interactive games together, including zTriviaTM, its proprietary trivia program updated bi-weekly with timely news and events designed to bring family and friends together as they share a meal. Additionally, guests can interact with friends via social media, pay their check right at the table whenever they choose, and share real-time feedback on their dining experience.
Enough Is Enough: USPS Announces Data Breach
Adding to the flood of breaches in 2014, the United States Postal Service revealed that it was the victim of a cyber attack that compromised the information of more than 800,000 employees, directors and regulators, as well as the data of customers who contacted its call center between January and August of this year.
Those at risk include employees, retirees, employees of the Postal Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and the Postal Service Office of Inspector General. Employee data could include: names, social security numbers, dates of birth, addresses, employment dates and emergency contact information.
"Fortunately, we have seen no evidence of malicious use of the compromised data and we are taking steps to help our employees protect against any potential misuse of their data," Postmaster General Patrick Donahoe said in a statement. In the meantime, systems have been significantly strengthened to prevent future attacks.
"The intrusion is limited in scope and all operations of the Postal Service are functioning normally," said USPS spokesman David Partenheimer in a statement.
Additional data may have been compromised on customers that contacted the Postal Service Customer Care Center by telephone or email during the same period. According to the Postal Service, its revenue systems including post offices and online, were not compromised and the information of credit and debit card customers is therefore safe. Additionally, the breach did not affect credit card data from retail or online services, including Click-N-Ship, the Postal Store, PostalOne! or change of address services.
While the source of the attack is still under investigation, it is evident that the attack was carried out by a "sophisticated person or group," said Partenheimer. "It looks similar to patterns that other government agencies and large corporations had experienced."
The FBI is leading the investigation.
The Postal Service held two briefings (October 22 and November 7) to update the staff of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on potential attackers and the scope of the breach, according to a letter released by ranking member Rep. Elijah E. Cummings. The letter, addressed to the postmaster general, requested more information on the attack.
"The increasing number of cyber attacks in both the public and private sectors is unprecedented and poses a clear and present danger to our nation's security," said Rep. Cummings, adding that officials have warned that more than 500 million financial records have been stolen by hackers over the past 12 months.
Samsung Advances Healthcare Apps
Massachusetts General Hospital, MIT Hacking Medicine and Samsung Electronics awarded six teams with cash prizes totaling $6,000 for their creation of innovative mobile healthcare solutions.
Each winning team is pre-qualified to submit refined proposals for a chance to compete for the Samsung Healthcare Innovation Grant—where $500,000 will be split amongst the winning teams.
"We challenged participants to create something that will change the trajectory of healthcare," said Peter Koo, Senior Vice President of Technology Strategy at Samsung Electronics. "These incredible minds did just that by creating solutions that are technically-disruptive, commercially-viable and most importantly, clinically-impactful."
Challenge Winners
The Innovation Challenge kicked off with keynote presentations by three industry leaders: Samsung Senior Vice President Peter Koo; Dr. David Ting, Chief Medical Information Officer of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH); and MIT Hacking Medicine Co-Founder Zen Chu.
Samsung provided hackathon participants with the Samsung Gear S, Galaxy Note 4 and expert engineering mentors to support twenty-one teams in the creation of scalable healthcare solutions—across all levels of the medical value chain.
A panel of ten judges selected the following teams for their winning solutions:
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1st Place, $1,250: ETHER – Allows the operating room manager to receive real time data from anesthesia providers who can send status updates right from their wrist
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2nd Place, $1,000: Clean – Provides compliance tracking for hospital-acquired infection protocols by discovering when health care workers enter patient rooms and combines that with data from smart sanitizing stations
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3rd Place, $750: Migraine Trackz – Gives migraine sufferers the ability to identify triggers through data collected by personal and environmental sensors on the Samsung Gear S
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Samsung Favorite, $1,000: FitFriend – Using the Gear S, FitFriend provides a fun, interactive digital character that reminds users to keep moving and make healthier food choices
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Mass General Favorite, $1,000: CADI – Access patient files and information faster and more accurately through a voice-activated electronic health record
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Crowd Favorite, $1,000: ETHER – Mentioned above
Data Breaches Have Not Changed the Behavior of Many Shoppers
Despite the near-constant stream of retailer data breaches over the past year, many American consumers have not changed their behavior when using credit and debit cards.
RSA, The Security Division of EMC, released the results of a new survey in conjunction with the Ponemon Institute highlighting consumer attitudes toward online security. Surveying more than 1,000 consumers in the United States, the survey found that nearly half of respondents had fallen victim to at least one data breach and 45% say they are not confident they know all instances of when their personal information has been leaked.
Many of the respondents have showcased a boosted concern around security driven by the increase in mobile and the prevalence of data breaches. However, despite growing concerns, in many cases behaviors toward security have not changed.
The results of the survey are intriguing — although nearly half of shoppers falling victim to a security breach, there is an inclination to increase online behaviors that have proven risky, like online shopping, and an overwhelming unwillingness to change risky behavior. Forty-eight percent admit to online shopping on a weekly basis, and while respondents rated security expectations high for activities like online banking and mobile transactions, security expectations for online shopping were shockingly low. Even with expectations being low, so many being personally affected by data breaches, and the wave of retail data breaches involving payment card information, 45% of the respondents say that it has no effect on their use of credit or debit cards.
Weak authentication is still an issue among most consumers, with 62% expressing a lack of trust in websites that only require a username and password at login. While 71% of respondents say they are most concerned about losing their password in a data breach, nearly a third admits to only having one to two passwords for all online accounts; 69% admit to using the same password for more than one device or site; and only 54% say that they regularly change their passwords. When questioned about preferred authentication methods, a majority of respondents cited software tokens and/or biometrics (voice and fingerprint verification) as the ideal ways to manage identities.
