Retail theft isn’t just a nuisance, it’s a billion-dollar problem threatening margins, operational efficiency, and team safety.
According to the National Retail Federation’s 2023 Retail Security Survey, shrink cost U.S. retailers $112.1 billion in 2022 alone. With organized retail crime (ORC) becoming more sophisticated and internal theft tactics evolving, outdated theft prevention strategies just don’t cut it anymore.
To stay ahead, retail leaders need modern, proactive, and data-driven loss prevention (LP) and security strategies that work across departments – including security, operations, HR, LP, and finance – and scale across locations.
This guide delivers 15 highly effective, practical methods to help you reduce shrink, increase profitability, and improve visibility in 2025 and beyond.
What causes retail theft?
Understanding the why behind theft helps you build better defenses. Common sources include:
External theft / ORC: Coordinated efforts to steal high-value items across multiple stores.
Internal theft: Employee-related fraud, including cash theft or comped items.
Opportunistic theft: Crimes of convenience when the environment is poorly monitored.
Policy/procedural gaps: Inconsistent store closing practices or unlocked stockrooms.
Prevent shrink before it happens with proven strategies
Solink combines smart video with real-time data to help you act fast and stay ahead of loss.
Modern loss prevention solutions make it easier to track metrics that guide improvement, such as:
Shrink rate per location
Refund volume by employee
Discount rate
Time to resolve incidents
Video-to-transaction match rate
Frequency of policy violations
The use of security cameras as a video intelligence tool, by using software such as Solink, surfaces these KPIs so that your security, LP, and operations teams have access to the data that drives real business ROI.
15 effective retail theft prevention methods
Human-centered approaches
1. Employee training for theft awareness
Employees are your first line of defense. But without proper training, they may miss or mishandle theft-related situations. That’s why it’s important to equip your team to:
Training reinforced with real video examples, especially those tied to POS events, helps staff retain knowledge and take smarter action that protects your business against theft in real time.
2. Use verified video alarm monitoring
Video alarms help distinguish real threats from false ones. Solink’s video alarm monitoring solution, for example, connects directly to your cameras to validate motion events and reduce false alarms. This minimizes unnecessary calls to law enforcement and ensures faster response when it counts.
As alarm validation scoring (AVS) becomes increasingly used, and many police departments do not even respond to unverified alarms, video alarm monitoring and verification of threats is becoming critical for the security of your business.
Most retailers won’t want to admit it, but internal theft remains one of the largest contributors to shrink. One key way to prevent internal theft is to use video and transaction audit trails to enforce accountability without micromanaging your staff.
Other ways include:
Dual-authorization for high-value refunds
No-sale transaction monitoring
Bag checks at shift end
Random spot checks
4. Anonymous reporting tools
To prevent theft at your stores it’s important to create a safe channel for employees to report unethical behavior and theft. Anonymous reporting platforms increase the likelihood that staff will speak up, especially when peer theft is involved. These reports can be validated with video evidence, helping loss prevention and security teams to investigate with confidence.
5. Strategic staffing at high-risk times
Late nights, shift changes, and closing hours are peak theft windows. The use of AI video analytics and historical POS data can help you identify your risk periods, and adjust your staffing schedule to ensure more eyes on the floor when it matters most.
Small changes can make a big impact on loss prevention
See how Solink helps you identify patterns, catch incidents, and secure your operations.
One of the most powerful tools in modern retail theft prevention is the integration of video with transaction data. Solink’s platform, for example, links video footage to specific POS events, such as refunds, voids, or no-sales.
This makes it easy to:
Search by transaction type or employee
Review only suspicious events (not hours of footage)
Investigate internal theft quickly and with context
7. AI-powered anomaly detection
AI can detect behaviors that humans miss, like someone loitering in a restricted zone, accessing a cash drawer after hours, or performing too many refunds in one shift. Here at Solink our AI technology can help you easily find outliers that indicate risk.
8. Real-time alerts for high-risk events
Don’t wait days to find out something went wrong. Real-time alerts can help your team identify suspicious activity such as:
A known ORC suspect enters the store
A delivery door is opened at an unusual time
A restricted area is accessed without permission
With the right system in place, these alerts can include linked video clips that allow you to take action fast.
9. Smart camera placement & blind spot analysis
A surprising number of retail stores have critical blind spots, areas where theft is more likely to occur. This is simply down to one thing, not having their security cameras placed in strategic locations.
With things like heatmap analytics and zone-based motion detection, you can pinpoint:
Areas with low visibility
Frequently visited zones by potential offenders
Product hotspots with higher shrink risk
Reposition your cameras based on real data, not guesswork.
10. Access control for restricted areas
It’s important that you restrict and monitor who can access storage rooms, safes, and employee-only areas. With integrated access control systems, you can match badge entries with video footage to confirm who entered and what they did.
Process, policy & platform improvements
11. Standardize your open/close procedures with video
Both the opening and closing of your stores represents a critical risk period for your business. This is the time where theft, particularly internal related, is likely to happen. The use of video verification to standardize and confirm processes such as cash drawer closings, door lockups, and alarm settings will help ensure everything is being done to the book.
Organized retail crime isn’t limited to one store. In fact, crime syndicates will typically target multiple locations – possibly even at the same time – once they have found a security weakness that they can take advantage of.
Share evidence with other stores or law enforcement
Understand how different locations are being targeted
13. Track refund & discount abuse by employee
With the right system in place, your business will be able to ,monitor patterns in refunds and discounts to catch:
Favoritism
Discount stacking
Fake refunds
When paired with video footage, these patterns help build stronger internal cases.
14. Perform spot checks with AI
Manually reviewing every camera feed across multiple stores is impossible. Let AI do the heavy lifting with schedule spot checks. With this security feature, your team will be able to schedule automatic visual checks for:
Door closures
Empty shelves
Unsafe behavior (e.g., running, crowd formation)
15. Centralized incident investigation and sharing
When incidents occur, time is everything. With the right incident management tool your team will be able to:
Tag relevant footage
Share securely with internal teams or law enforcement
Keep an audit trail for compliance or HR reviews
How Solink supports retail theft prevention
Solink helps retailers modernize their LP and security strategy without replacing existing hardware. Here’s how:
POS + video integration for searchable, event-based investigations
AI anomaly detection to surface risky behaviors before they become costly
Real-time alerts and remote access from anywhere
Cross-functional insights that support ops, security, HR, IT, and compliance
Scalable cloud platform that grows with your store count
Hybrid cloud architecture that reduces hardware and bandwidth costs
Whether you’re managing a handful of stores or hundreds, Solink brings your data and your cameras together into one intelligent, actionable platform.
Retail theft prevention in 2025 requires more than locked doors and legacy DVRs. LP and security leaders need scalable, intelligent tools that surface insights, reduce manual overhead, and support fast, accurate decision-making.
Whether you’re battling ORC, trying to speed up investigations, or looking to make smarter use of your existing cameras – Solink helps you modernize your security without the rip-and-replace required with many other solutions.
Book a personalized demo to see how Solink can help your team reduce shrink and increase profits today.
Your retail security strategy just got smarter
Solink’s integrated platform helps you uncover threats, take action quickly, and create a culture of accountability.
