Enterprises are growing fast. Businesses are expanding their reach to new locations across the nation (or even the world), and with this growth comes new challenges for security professionals. According to Five Below, the discount retail chain opened 123 new stores in 2024 and plans to add 150 to 180 more in 2025, making it one of the fastest-expanding brands in its industry.
While this kind of growth is great for business, it also creates some new challenges as teams work to keep up with a growing number of locations. More stores mean more surveillance cameras, access control systems, alarms, and all the security data that comes with them. That’s a lot to manage! So, what can security leaders do to make sure they have the right tools in place to keep everything running smoothly as their organizations grow?
Step One: Avoid the Growing Pains
Expanding to new locations means more doors to monitor, more people coming and going, and more assets to keep an eye on, and with more to monitor comes more security data to manage. For example, access control systems are an essential part of enterprise security, but only if teams have the right tools to organize data and manage systems spread across multiple locations. Operators can use this data to spot trends, get a big-picture view of daily operations, and improve security for critical spaces. But as businesses spread out across different locations, staying on top of it all gets trickier. The question is, how can security teams keep things running without getting buried in data overload?
Keeping security systems running across multiple locations can stretch teams thin, especially when sites need maintenance and system updates across long distances. Integrations are the backbone of any successful security strategy, but making sure everything runs smoothly across different systems becomes more challenging as businesses expand to new locations. The challenge only increases when new locations install different security solutions from different vendors. Without a centralized platform to streamline management, security operators may have to manage and maintain disparate systems individually.
Step Two: Unify
A unified platform makes it easier for teams to make sense of security data across multiple locations. With all their data in one place, operators can stay on top of potential threats, reduce downtime, and respond faster when incidents occur. When security operators can monitor everything from a central console, it simplifies management, increases situational awareness, and makes it easier to scale systems as new locations come into the mix. This gives them the flexibility to grow their security operations alongside the rest of the company.
By unifying security systems into one streamlined platform, security personnel can unlock the situational awareness they need to identify and prevent emerging security risks before they escalate. Beyond security, businesses can use correlated security data to create actionable insights to increase operational efficiency by tracking customer activities and employee productivity to maximize their systems’ value.
By leaving the door open for future integrations, businesses can ensure their security platform always has the bandwidth to grow and include new systems as needed, whether responding to unauthorized access, preventing data theft, or getting ahead of potential risks using data.
Step Three: Scale to the Moon
For a modern enterprise to be expansion-ready, its security portfolio must be able to grow with it. Scalability and flexibility aren’t just nice to have — they’re a must for getting the most out of security investments and staying prepared for future growth. A unified platform keeps every location connected and every risk in check so businesses can expand with confidence, knowing their security team won’t fall behind. As enterprises grow, a centralized, scalable approach to security helps teams manage multiple sites, easily integrate new solutions, and stay on top of operations without drowning in data.
Ready to take the first step toward scalable security for your business? Start a conversation here.
