Why Businesses Must Rethink Security in an Era of Constant Change

by Bernardo Motta

All retailers share a commitment to maintaining safe, secure spaces for staff and customers, but retail security can be challenging at the best of times. Store managers must contend with both external and internal threats leveraged across physical and digital environments, all while navigating common industry challenges such as training shortfalls and labor shortages.

In recent years, the retail security landscape has become increasingly complex, with various economic, technological and demographic issues impacting security operations. From a rise in post-pandemic guest violence to resource shortages worsened by inflation, management teams across the retail industry are finding it increasingly difficult and expensive to address security concerns.

In an era of constant change, retail leaders must pursue agile security operations. However, they are in a difficult position, as combating threats requires investment in skill development, yet high turnover erodes that investment immediately. To break this cycle, retail leaders must rely on technology to bridge the gap between expertise and attrition.

Understanding the Retail Security Threat Landscape

Let’s start by identifying and understanding the current pressures facing retail security teams. Various socioeconomic and technological factors are combining to create a threat landscape marred by rising crime levels and declining resource availability, leaving many teams understaffed and overstressed.

With inflation and tariffs influencing pricing pressures, and facing slow sales growth and low consumer confidence, many retailers are choosing to cut back on staffing hours and spending. With weakened protections in place, safety risks rise, creating challenging conditions for retail security teams. 

The recently published Impact of Retail Theft and Violence 2025 report by the National Retail Federation (NRF) helps illustrate these challenges using contemporary data. In the report, researchers highlight a ≈20% rise in external theft, 46% increase in guest-related violence and ≈50% surge in cargo theft, placing increasing pressure on already resource-strapped retailers.

Elsewhere in the report, data suggests criminals are becoming bolder and more aggressive; almost 75% of retailers believe shoplifters have become more violent in recent years, while around 20% have experienced a rise in threats posed against workers during theft incidents. 

These insights, coupled with wider data revealing that as many as 80% of retailers have suffered cyberattacks in recent years, paint a picture of a retail security landscape facing increasingly complex challenges at a time when economic troubles are making resources scarce.

Navigating Staffing and Training Challenges

Some of the biggest challenges retailers face in tackling current security threats involve staffing and training. While traditional security measures remain effective in mitigating common risks such as shoplifting, impactful operations often rely on smart training and skill development.

For example, skilled camera operators can identify signs of emerging threats before impacts are felt, then communicate insights to floor staff to drive informed responses. However, such workflows are fairly skill-dependent and thus difficult to maintain across a variable workforce without considerable training effort.

That said, the NRF’s report reveals this is something retailers are exploring, with as many as 90% claiming rising levels of violent theft are spurring leaders to provide more training. A big issue currently, however, is balancing investments in training with efforts to address turnover.

Retail already suffers one of the highest turnover rates of any industry, landing between 60-80%. Worryingly, rising threats of violence against staff are starting to influence turnover, with 52% of staff ready to leave their current roles due to personal safety concerns.

Retailers are in a difficult position. To combat threats with minimal resources requires investments in skill development and knowledge sharing, but high turnover is creating issues related to resource use and preparedness. With all this in mind, something needs to change.

Exploring Innovative Retail Security Solutions

To address modern challenges and create safer retail environments, leaders require security measures that are both easily taught and reliably effective. If retailers can find a way to ease skill gaps while maintaining high security, then issues with turnover and training can be overcome.

Smart security technologies, specifically AI-powered tools, are well-positioned to solve this, with advancements in AI showing promise in simplifying operations while improving security outcomes. Crucially, these modern solutions often function as an “overlay” — connecting to existing cameras and access control systems. This maximizes the value of current hardware investments, allowing retailers to modernize operations and reduce CapEx without the crushing expense of a “rip-and-replace” project.

Existing security technologies, such as cameras, access systems and sensors, are already viewed as highly effective tools by modern retailers. The NRF’s report states that 42% believe security technologies are the most effective tools available to help curb crime-related losses.

The issue faced by many retailers, however, involves managing disparate security systems and analyzing siloed security data. Without knowledge and experience, overseeing multiple systems and responding appropriately to alerts can be challenging, creating issues related to false alerts, data mistrust and operator fatigue that can ultimately expose new vulnerabilities.

The Case for AI-Driven Security Management

The answer lies in integrated, AI-driven management systems; software designed to reliably identify threats, understand the context and guide responses via intelligent automation. Using such systems, staff of all skill levels can focus on important events with AI tools configured to filter out noise and automatically resolve lower-level threats. This ensures operators are only interrupted for genuine security risks.

This type of intelligent solution could provide retailers with many of the benefits of a full-blown Security Operations Center (SOC) without the same training and maintenance needs. Real-time data from cameras, sensors and access systems around the store can be combined in a unified platform, with AI technology used to triage events, flag important ones and automatically trigger an automated response plan.

Consider a sophisticated Organized Retail Crime (ORC) tactic: an accomplice intentionally triggers a restroom vape sensor to lure security away, while a partner targets high-value inventory. In a traditional workflow, guards rush to the distraction, leaving the sales floor vulnerable. An AI-driven system prevents this by instantly triaging the simultaneous events. It prioritizes high-risk loitering near assets over the environmental alert, ensuring operators stay focused on the active threat. The system then guides the response — dispatching floor staff to the suspect — while automatically logging the distraction for evidence and compliance.

By utilizing AI technologies, retailers can develop workflows where staff are only made aware of security incidents when action is required and intelligently guided through a response, helping to ensure potential risks are tackled proactively while reducing training requirements.

A Smarter Future for Retail Security 

Intelligent security technologies, particularly AI-powered solutions, benefit retailers in addressing present security challenges. By leveraging systems designed to automatically spot, organize and respond to threats, teams can run effective, resource-efficient operations.

The NRF reports that many retailers are already exploring AI-powered solutions, with ≈30% and 45%, respectively, researching AI-enabled weapon detection and behavior detection technologies.

If retailers combine these technologies and traditional security devices within a unified, AI-driven SOC automation software, they will likely find effective ways to overcome present security challenges, allowing leaders to eliminate skill gaps and streamline threat responses.

In an era of constant change, retailers need adaptable security measures, with AI-powered tools providing an ideal solution built to address evolving threats and support an effective response from security teams.

About the Author

Bernardo Motta works at Motorola Solutions as the Product Manager for Inform, an AI-powered, cloud-based SOC automation platform that provides real-time threat monitoring and automated responses. He graduated in Electrical Engineering (IST, Lisbon) and was co-founder of Observit, an IST spin-off acquired by IndigoVision in 2020.