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Image Victoria Police recently updated its shop-theft prevention advice, recommending CCTV in key areas of retail stores and that staff know how to save and provide footage when required. But many LP professionals deliberately restrict store staff from accessing footage. And for good reason — privacy, misuse and unauthorised sharing. I think LP Managers have this right. Staff don't necessarily need access to the footage as much as they need access to a business process that w

Image An interesting story out of the UK involving Auror, the New Zealand-founded retail crime intelligence platform. The UK's privacy regulator took action against London's Metropolitan Police for using the platform without the necessary approvals and privacy safeguards. The action was against the police, not Auror. The police have since addressed the issues and resumed using the platform. For LP professionals, there's a useful reminder here. Connecting CCTV, incident report

Image A customer recently asked us to include a backup comms option in their security. What happens to alarm reporting if the internet goes down? Does CCTV continue recording? Can the monitoring center still verify an alarm? Who gets notified when the connection fails? And what does all this cost to maintain? Different parts of a security system have different dependencies. Some functions may continue locally, others need an external connection, and some require considerably

A CCTV customer used the phrase ‘theft migration’ on me last week. Great expression. They'd recently experienced it firsthand. After upgrading CCTV in one store, they noticed theft activity shifting to another store that hadn't received the same upgrade. On one hand, that's a pretty good indication the CCTV is doing its job. On the other, it raises an interesting challenge for LP professionals. If improving security in one store shifts theft to another, does that change how y

A journey of 100 stores might start with securing three cabinets in one of them. In my experience, the best time to solve a retail security problem is before the brief is written. Before quantities are counted, products specified and definitely before someone requests a price for 100 stores. The smartest LP professionals I see identify the highest-risk areas first and test a few different solutions in one store first. They find out what actually works — for the cabinetry, the

Why are you installing a cloud-managed CCTV system? That’s not an argument against cloud, it’s just the first question you should ask. The usual answers are: ✓ We want every store in one place ✓ We want simple remote access ✓ We want central user management ✓ We don’t want an NVR at every site ✓ We want to be camera-agnostic All reasonable. But before accepting the premium, compare what you’re actually getting: What the retailer needs Cloud-managed system Conventional NVR sys

Bringing together retailers, suppliers and industry leaders from across Australia and New Zealand isn't a small feat. For one day in August, an industry that's usually spread across thousands of kilometers gets to have the conversations that simply don't happen over email or Teams. Credit to Paul Bessant and the team for continuing to invest in something that genuinely brings the retail risk community together. Looking forward to seeing plenty of familiar faces, making some n

The best partners don't just install systems—they quietly remove friction from your day.

Not bad for a profession that's been around for about 4,000 years. Some things are worth learning properly.

Some of our clients rely on National Registered Key Systems. Others use fully wireless access control. Both are right.

We're noticing that CCTV is increasingly appearing in the design brief, not being bolted on later as a countermeasure. The cynic might say it's simply a sign of the times. I'd argue it's something else. Retailers are realising that the incremental cost of installing CCTV during a new build is almost a rounding error compared with the operational simplicity it delivers over the life of the store. It's no longer just about investigating theft. It's reviewing a safety event.

Retail is hard enough without preventable operational chaos. Most of the work we do now is less about hardware and more about helping stores run with less friction.

If you’re looking for a new Loss Prevention partner, let me offer a simple suggestion: Don’t start with the spreadsheet. Start with your peers. Call the LP managers you respect most. Ask them which installers just quietly work — which installers the tech staff actually use, which installers pick up the phone after the install, and, finally, which installers are consistent with equipment, naming conventions, and project rollouts. Find out who installed those. There’s your shor

Everyone agrees shrink matters — but apparently not enough to fund it. No one argues it’s isn’t real. No one says it’s not hurting margin. But when things actually get approved, it rarely comes through due to shrink. It’s staff safety. WorkCover claims. Hostile behaviour on the shop floor. That’s what gets attention. That’s what gets budget. Maybe the issue isn’t whether shrink matters, it’s how it shows up, because “shrink went down 1%” isn’t a story anyone can act on.

The RBA says card surcharges are disappearing from October next year. Sounds great for consumers at first glance. No more annoying “1.9% surcharge” appearing at checkout. But there’s a much bigger conversation coming. If your cost of acceptance is 1.9%, and most of your revenue comes through Visa / Mastercard, that’s not a 1.9% reduction in profit. For a lot of businesses, that could be closer to a 10–20% hit to net profit depending on margin. Businesses are not just going to

When we sell apparel, we create opportunity. Racks make it easy to browse. They also make it easy to take. Everyone accepts the first part. We seem surprised by the second. Some teams design for that from day one, processes, merchandise placement, master keys, CCTVs and alarms. Part of the fit-out. Others add it later. All reactions. Same problem. Very different outcomes. Because once the store is open, everything becomes a compromise.

So you spend time with a team. Good conversations. Ideas shared. Maybe even do a bit of work together. Then… silence. Follow up email. Nothing. Call. Voicemail. (You know they’ve seen it.) So you move on. Then a few months later — they’re back like nothing happened. And you’re there for them. No hard feelings. The funny thing is… we all do it. Things shift. Priorities change. Something else becomes more urgent. It’s probably just part of the job. But it does make me think… Wi

Feels like we might be moving from loss prevention… to loss investigation. If AI does what it says — more incidents flagged, more behaviours detected — then what? More alerts = more cases. More cases = more follow-up. Do LP teams become investigators? And if that happens… does anything actually change? Do we see more legal action, more offenders held accountable, more public awareness that “you will be caught” or just more footage… sitting there? Genuine question — does bett

I walk into a lot of stores that don’t have one. Everything seems fine. Keys work. Doors open. Then something small happens - a staff member leaves, a key goes missing (if your lucky enough to notice), a key gets copied (did i say you might not notice?) a contractor still has access. Very gradually and then all at once.... no one is quite sure who can open what anymore. Master key systems aren’t really about locks or keys. They’re about control. Knowing who has access today —

Yes, that’s right. Something else to worry about. AI cameras can now trigger alerts when someone covertly takes something off your shelves. If you didn’t know that, well… now you do. Happy to show you a demo. Anyway, enough sales talk — back to job security. If a camera can watch every aisle, 24/7, and automatically flag suspicious behaviour… it sounds like the investigation work disappears. But I think the opposite is about to happen. AI doesn’t remove the work — it creates