Retail Security
Protect your store, your inventory, and your team
Retail businesses face unique security challenges—from shoplifting and employee theft to after-hours break-ins. Surety Business gives you Alarm.com's proven retail security tools without the markup or long-term contracts.
The scale and sources of retail shrink
Your end-of-day count is $340 short. Your cashier says the register was fine all day. You have no footage of the register area. What do you do? This scenario—a cash discrepancy with no documentation to investigate—is one of the most common and costly problems in retail, and one of the most preventable. The National Retail Federation's 2023 survey found US retailers lost $112.1 billion to inventory shrink, with employee theft accounting for roughly 28.5% of that total. The cameras most retailers install face the sales floor and entrance. The register, back room, and return desk—where most internal theft happens—often go uncovered.
Organized retail crime has shifted significantly toward independent and mid-size retailers over the past several years. Large national chains have dedicated loss prevention departments and direct law enforcement relationships. Smaller retailers are perceived as softer targets. The Retail Industry Leaders Association documented a 26.5% increase in ORC incidents in recent years, and ORC groups conduct reconnaissance visits before a theft—scouting camera blind spots and staff patterns. A camera system with no blind spots and cloud-stored footage deters these groups before they act and provides the documentation law enforcement needs to build a case when they do.
Return fraud costs US retailers an estimated $25.3 billion annually according to NRF data—stolen merchandise returned for store credit, worn goods presented as unworn, price-switching fraud. These are difficult to investigate or prosecute without visual documentation of the transaction. Camera coverage of your return counter, with footage retrievable by transaction time, gives you evidence to identify patterns across multiple incidents and present to law enforcement as part of a coordinated case. It also changes behavior at the counter: the return desk is where the most creative fraud attempts happen, and coverage there is one of the highest-return camera placements in a retail environment.
Why retailers choose Surety
Loss prevention
Video surveillance with person detection helps identify suspicious activity. Review footage instantly when incidents occur and share clips with law enforcement.
After-hours protection
Professional monitoring responds to break-ins 24/7. Get alerts when doors open unexpectedly and verify alarms with live video before dispatch.
Employee accountability
Track who opens and closes the store with user codes. Set schedules to ensure the alarm is armed on time every night.
Solutions for retail
Intrusion detection
- Door and window sensors on all entry points
- Motion detectors for after-hours coverage
- Glass break sensors for storefront protection
- Scheduled arming ensures the store is secured every night
Video surveillance
- Cover POS areas, entrances, and stockrooms
- Person and vehicle detection reduces false alerts
- Cloud storage for easy clip retrieval
- Share video with police directly from the app
Access control
- Control back room and office access
- Manage employee credentials from your phone
- Audit trail shows who accessed restricted areas
- Instantly revoke access when employees leave
Multi-location management
- Single dashboard for all your stores
- Compare activity across locations
- Standardize security policies chain-wide
- Regional managers get location-specific access
Ideal for self-managing retailers
If you or your team can mount cameras, install door sensors, and follow setup instructions, you can save thousands compared to traditional security companies. Surety provides the same Alarm.com platform used by national retailers—without the installer markup or multi-year contracts.