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Loss Prevention: What Do the Mob, eBay and Winona Ryder Have in Common?

Loss prevention experts like Tiffany CSO David McGowan say closer integration among security disciplines will go a long way toward managing the retail industry's myriad risks.

McGowan: Yeah, I think you need to customize to your organization, and you may even need to customize geographically depending on the scope of your operations. Some things that work in the United States don't work in Japan or other areas. One of the things we're giving consideration toand funding and infrastructure are always a challengeis that we want to get to higher training retention. We can use video, sound and entertainment to improve the quality of training. This will allow employees to do more just-in-time training where they can take themselves through various programs or refresh.

Rogers: That can be done on the employees' own time, but more importantly you can track the progress of your employees. If you put training of store security officers into an electronic interactive media, you can actually produce their training records in court if called upon to do so.

McGowan: That's an excellent point. As a luxury brand retailer, we watched with great curiosity and interest the whole Winona Ryder case that took place out in Beverly Hills with Saks Fifth Avenue. It was very high profile, and I know that records were subpoenaed to determine the quality of the education that the security personnel had received. To move training into a medium where there's a trackable and traceable record over time is very important to any security organization.

Rogers: Having documented high-quality training not only served to help convict Winona Ryder but also served to protect the retailer in the process. If you fail to provide that kind of protection, that's a very expensive lesson for a retailer to learn, not only in raw dollars but in terms of brand erosion. Let's say that the Winona Ryder case did not turn out the way it did and that Saks had done a bad job of training its peopleSaks would have lost a lot of credibility with the general public and with its customers.So technology advances have led to better training and better documentation. What are other promising technologies for the loss prevention industry?Rogers: Video can be extremely useful if it is used properly and managed properly and integrated with other technologies. One good example is monitoring a transaction at the point of sale. Take a supermarket environment where the cashier is scanning a lot of different products: There are things that cashiers can do if they are dishonest during checkout to benefit the customer like passing merchandise or giving out discounts. Whatever trick they are trying, the best way to catch that is with video because it also gives you an evidentiary record.