Check Call: The most common password of all

Welcome to Check Call, our corner of the internet for all things 3PL, freight broker and supply chain. Check Call the podcast comes out every Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. EDT. Catch up on previous episodes here. If this was forwarded to you, sign up for Check Call the newsletter here.

In this edition: It might be time to change the password; new Container Atlas findings; and is it double brokering if it’s “responsible”?

123456 is the most common password in 2023. While cybersecurity is something that IT makes countless videos about, it’s often something most people don’t think about. When everything has a different account for you to log into, it becomes exhausting to keep track of all of the passwords. Everyone thinks it’s fine … till it’s not.

Ransomware attacks are on the rise and it seems that the criminals are targeting everyone, no one is safe. Expeditors International of Washington is still dealing with the fallout of hackers in February of 2022. The Wall Street Journal reports that this incident has cost Expeditors $47 million and counting. Its customer, iRobot Corp. — notably the Roomba robot vacuum company — has sought $2.1 million for delays and lost business alone. That’s before the storage charges for freight and another $18 million on technology services to investigate and recover from the incident.

Because these types of attacks are happening to more than just logistics companies, it means that if a shipper or vendor partner gets hacked, your data could be compromised as well. That can also happen the other way around, putting your customers’ and vendor partners’ data at risk should you get hacked. The running list of notable hacks can be found here.

To maybe refresh the IT password security video we all totally promised we watched, just know that these are the most common passwords, according to the Commercial Carrier Journal, so far this year so if you see yours … maybe just go ahead and change it.

1. company name

2. password

3. 123456

4. company’s email domain.com

5. aaron431

6. company name01

7. company name123

8. xxxcompany name

9. Company name123

10. company’s email domain.com

Market Check. ICYMI (in case you missed it) last week at the Future of Supply Chain in Cleveland, there was a hefty SONAR announcement. Container Atlas has been around about a year or so, but last week it got an upgrade. Now Container Atlas has detailed port-to-port or regional pricing.

For example, Haifa, Israel, to the Ports of New York and New Jersey per 40-foot container t is t $5,321.5 ,a 195.6% increase month over month, which also explains why it’s leading the charge on the graph — it’s the red line. Even if ocean shipping isn’t your speciality, it’s helpful to know where the freight is moving to and how much people are paying because they might be looking to cut some of those transportation costs on the truck side.

Who’s with whom? Prologis is expanding its portfolio again. The company entered into an all-cash agreement with Blackstone to acquire $3.1 billion in real estate. This acquisition includes 14 million square feet of space from various real estate funds — just a real casual acquisition of property on Prologis’ part. As one of the top real estate operators in the U.S., the way Prologis is about to expand will be incomparable, especially because now it will at 77 new customers to the portfolio as a result of this deal.

FreightWaves’ Todd Maiden’s article quotes Nadeem Meghji, head of Blackstone Real Estate Americas, as saying, “Where you invest matters, and this transaction demonstrates the exceptional demand for high-quality warehouses. With near record low vacancy, logistics remains a high conviction theme for us; we are proud owners of $100 billion of warehouses in North America and $175 billion in total around the world.”

Double broker red flags

Double broker red flag No. 6: There is no such thing as “responsible double brokering.”

No matter how good the deal is, do not trust a “responsible double broker.” The amount of “oh, the truck is broken down” excuses that come across the screen around 3 p.m. every day is impressive. That excuse can be thwarted by just saying, “Oh, send me the shop receipt.” Sometimes the truck is broken down or someone truly does have a family emergency. In that case, always try to get documentation or recover the load when unforeseen circumstances arise.

Got any favorite tips? Let me know. I’d love to share them with everyone.