A warehouse has more in common with a factory than with a shop, but it is not quite either. High-value stock moves through it constantly, footfall is low compared to retail, and a meaningful share of activity happens during hours nobody is walking the floor. A security brief copied from a shop or an office misses most of what actually matters here.
Why a warehouse is a different brief
A shop's risk concentrates at the till and the entrance, with constant footfall acting as a natural deterrent. A warehouse has the opposite profile: low footfall, high-value stock sitting for extended periods, and multiple points - inbound gate, loading dock, racking aisles - where stock can move without a customer-facing witness to notice. The system has to be designed around stock movement, not around customer traffic, because there usually is none.
The three zones: gate, dock, and racking
- Gate. Every vehicle in and out, with number-plate reading where trucks are involved, so movement in and out of the site is a matched record, not an assumption.
- Loading dock. The highest-risk zone in most warehouses - this is where stock physically changes hands between the building and a vehicle, and where discrepancies most often originate. Coverage here should be wide enough to see the full loading process, not just the doorway.
- Racking aisles. Lower priority for continuous monitoring but valuable for investigation - if a discrepancy is traced to a specific aisle and time window, footage there is what confirms or rules out what happened.
Night cover: the shift when warehouses are most exposed
Warehouses are frequently at their lowest staffing, and sometimes fully unstaffed, overnight - exactly when a security gap is least likely to be noticed in real time. Night-usable infrared coverage at the gate and dock, adequate site lighting, and a monitored alarm or access control on entry points matter more here than in a facility staffed around the clock. If your warehouse runs a night shift, the same zones need coverage tuned for low light, not the daytime settings left unchanged after dark.
Stock discrepancy investigation: what footage needs to support
When a stock-take turns up a discrepancy, the investigation usually needs to answer a specific question: did this leave through the dock, and if so, when and on which vehicle. This only works if dock footage is detailed enough to read what is being loaded, not just that loading is happening, and if retention reaches back far enough to cover the gap since the last stock-take - which in many warehouses is longer than a typical thirty-day default.
Sizing retention around your stock-take cycle
Retention should be sized to how far back you realistically need to look, and for a warehouse that is usually set by the stock-take cycle, not a generic industry default. If discrepancies are found monthly, thirty days of footage may already be too short to cover the full gap since the last count. State your actual stock-take frequency during the survey so retention is sized to it explicitly, rather than defaulting to whatever fits the cheapest disk.
Common questions
Does every racking aisle need its own camera?
Usually not - end-of-aisle coverage combined with gate and dock coverage catches most of what an investigation needs, and full aisle-by-aisle coverage is rarely proportionate to the risk. We size this to your layout and stock value during the survey rather than applying a blanket rule.
How is warehouse retention different from a shop or office?
It should be tied to your stock-take cycle rather than a generic number of days - if discrepancies are only caught monthly or quarterly, retention needs to reach back at least that far, which is often longer than the thirty-day default many systems ship with.
Do we need cameras inside delivery vehicles or only at the dock?
Camera coverage stops at the dock and gate in almost every system we install - inside a vehicle is outside what a fixed installation covers. What matters at the dock is a clear, detailed view of what is loaded and unloaded, which is where the investigation-relevant evidence actually is.