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Protecting retail distribution centres from an escalating threat By Graham Swallow, Axis Communications, Northern Europe The retail industry has faced more than its fair share of challenges as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. An increasing trend towards online shopping has put more pressure on logistics and operations businesses, and seen shops and underutilized premises being converted into local fulfilment and distribution centres1 to cope with demand. With consumers still wary of venturing onto the high street, and the comparative ease of shopping online, this trend looks unlikely to change in coming years. Yet poorly guarded premises can present an easy target for criminals eager to get their hands on valuable goods. In 2019 total UK retail crime losses were estimated to be around £4,821 million2. While it’s imperative that retail organisations continually risk assess and take steps to better secure their depots, the capabilities of legacy technologies such as standalone CCTV and manually operated access points are limited, and can no longer be relied on
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as a comprehensive security solution. Instead, network cameras, combined with other connected IoT technologies, can provide greater levels of surveillance and security, leading to benefits from both an operational and security perspective. Securing the perimeter The protection of any distribution centre starts at the perimeter. One of the many challenges is the high number of false alarms or ‘false positives’ that regularly occur at sites. These are genuine yet unverified alerts, caused by factors other than criminal activity such as a plastic bag blowing within the camera scene, animals or, in a store environment, it could just be personnel failing to follow procedure. This will cause resources being called to a site unnecessarily and usually out of operation hours; long term, this may result in general apathy around the system’s capabilities. Furthermore, multiple false callouts without hard evidence of a verifiable incident can result in the police removing a company’s
designated URN (unique reference number), given to a business to aid quick and efficient incident reporting. The absence of a URN makes reporting a genuine crime that much more difficult. False positives are a distraction to an organisation’s mission, and there are simple changes that can be made to vastly improve deterrent and alerting capabilities at a store or distribution centre site. Higher grade cameras, equipped with built in edge-based analytics will process video within the device itself for more accurate and effective assessment of a situation, minimizing the likelihood of false positives. The addition of radar to complement surveillance can offer additional benefits to security teams. Radar makes it possible to differentiate between people and vehicles, to accurately gauge the direction and speed of an object,
