Business Intelligence (BI)

Washington, D.C. -- The U.S. House of Representatives passed a long-awaited bill by a vote of 307-116 on Wednesday that would make it easier for private companies to share information about cybersecurity threats with the government without fear of lawsuits.

The bill must be approved by the U.S. Senate before it can be sent to President Barack Obama to sign into law. A similar measure was passed by a 14-1 vote in the Senate Intelligence Committee, and supporters say they expect strong bipartisan support in the full Senate as well.

Amazon.com’s sales growth in the first quarter continued to outpace the overall e-commerce growth rate, especially Web services, but expenses related to interest and currency exchange caused the online leader to report a $57 million net loss.

Total sales for the quarter ended March 31 increased 15% to $22.72 billion but a strengthening of the U.S. Dollar caused a $1.3 billion currency exchange headwind. On a constant currency basis, which is how global retailers like to analyze their business, sales increased 22%.

San Jose, Calif. – eBay Inc. topped Wall Street expectations for both profit and revenue in the first quarter of fiscal 2015. Growth in transactions and efforts to control expenses helped produce net income of $626 million, compared to a net loss of $2.33 billion the same quarter a year earlier.

EBay painted a mixed financial picture for the first quarter, with lower revenue from its marketplaces division and higher revenue from its Paypal division, which the company said it plans to spin off later this year.

Duluth, Ga. -- NCR Corp. announced supermarket chain Roche Bros. has implemented NCR’s Connected Payments to help with its payments security. Massachusetts-based Roche Bros. is using the cloud-based payment solution to manage all of its daily operations related to payments across its network of stores.

Boston -- Springboard Retail, a cloud POS and retail management platform, announced that casual chic lifestyle brand XCVI chose Springboard Retail to accelerate sales, profits and customer engagement as they continue to expand stores throughout the Western U.S.

Rite Aid Corp. announced Monday that Steve Rempel, a highly experienced information technology executive, has been named Rite Aid's SVP and chief information officer.

Verizon is out with its annual cyber security report and while the findings are disturbing the good news is that retailers can thwart many a breach attempt by focusing on a handful of basic attack patterns.

Verizon's "2015 Data Breach Investigations Report," reveals that cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, but many criminals still rely on decades-old techniques such as phishing and hacking. In fact, 70% of cyberattacks use a combination of these techniques and involve a secondary victim which adds complexity to a breach, according to the report.

Herndon, Va. - In 2014, ACH (automated clearing house) volume grew to almost 23 billion electronic payments, an increase of almost 5%, or 1 billion transactions, from 2013 volume. According to new statistics released by NACHA — The Electronic Payments Association, a total of more than $40 trillion was transferred via NACHA’s ACH Network in 2014, increasing more than 3% compared to 2013.
 

Fort Wayne, Ind. - Do it Best Corp., a hardware, lumber and building materials cooperative with 3,800 member-owned locations worldwide, has re-launched its ecommerce site on the WebLinc platform.

In addition, the company is unveiling a phased approach to re-launching individual member sites which will enable them to maintain their distinct, customer-facing identities while being integrated and powered by the same sophisticated commerce platform.