PDK + Solink: Access Control, Video Surveillance & POS Intelligence, Unified
- ProdataKey
- 1 day ago
- 4 min read
With shoplifting, organized retail crime (ORC), fraud, and violence increasing year over year, retail loss prevention teams are needing to adapt both technology and strategy to keep customers, employees, and inventory safe.
Together, PDK and Solink deliver a unified solution that helps retailers see issues sooner, investigate faster, and make smarter operational decisions from one cloud-based system — all while working with existing cameras and point of sale (POS) systems.
Retail Security: A Multi-Dimensional Challenge
According to the National Retail Federation, threats and acts of violence associated with theft incidents increased significantly year‑over‑year, while more than half of retailers reported increases in merchandise theft and other ORC‑related activities in the past 12 months:
Shoplifting incidents jumped nearly 93% when compared to pre‑pandemic levels with a sharp 19% increase from 2023 to 2024.
More than half of retailers reported rising merchandise theft, phone scams, e-commerce fraud, and cargo theft specifically tied to ORC networks.
Between 2024 and 2025:
70% of retailers report an increase in phone scams/frauds
55% of retailers report an increase in digital/ecommerce fraud
52% of retailers report an increase in shoplifting/retail merchandise theft
These trends not only affect loss prevention budgets and shrink trends, but also impact employee safety, customer experience, and operational workflows. Retailers now must balance the complex task of balancing theft mitigation with shopper engagement, requiring better visibility across systems and data.
Access control alone tells you when a door was accessed. Video alone shows you what happened. Transactional data tells you what was sold or refunded. But when these systems operate separately, valuable time is lost.
“The Solink and ProdataKey integration turns every access event into a context-rich, AI-analyzed story, helping customers validate safety and compliance, reduce shrink and ORC exposure, and understand how people really move through their spaces across every location."
Chris Wolski, Solink VP of Product Marketing and Market Strategy.
The PDK and Solink integration eliminates that gap by bringing access control events, video intelligence, and business data together in one single powerful cloud platform. “In today’s market, ‘event-only’ data isn’t enough,” Chris says. “Convergence — the way Solink and PDK do it — collapses that timeline. We’re moving from forensic, looking at what happened yesterday, to real-time verification. By pairing the 'event' with the 'visual' instantly, we’re giving businesses the gift of time. You’re not an investigator anymore; you’re an operator making informed decisions in seconds. That’s the standard for 2026."
PDK + Solink: Unified. Intelligent. Proactive.
Retail theft and ORC often involve repeat offenders and coordinated activity that can span multiple locations and time periods.
Integrated technology gives security teams the context and evidence they need to:
Accelerate investigations
Provide visual proof to law enforcement
Identify patterns tied to repeat offenders
Strengthen loss prevention strategies over time
Compatible with 99% of business grade cameras, the PDK + Solink integration empowers organizations to enhance their security ecosystem without ripping and replacing existing hardware.
PDK’s cloud‑native access control platform and Solink’s video security and analytics work together to give retailers:
Synchronized Visual and Access Context: Automatically sync access control events with video footage in the Solink platform to receive visual confirmation of any event in seconds.
Motion Search + Smart Filters: Quickly locate suspicious behavior with intelligent search features and customizable activity zones instead of manually scrubbing through hours of footage.
Transaction + Video Correlation: Drastically reduce investigation time and identify suspicious patterns by filtering and sorting events by transaction type, employee, item, and more.
Enterprise‑Wide Visibility: View trends, alerts, and incidents across unlimited locations from one dashboard with Solink’s cloud VMS.
AI‑Driven Operational Insight: Gain actionable insights beyond simple incident response. With Solink Sidekick AI, retailers can ask business questions like “Are employees arriving on time?” or “Did the stockroom door open after hours?” and receive visual, data‑based answers.
“If your video and access systems aren’t connected, your teams are doing extra work and still missing context,” Chris says. “Integrating them isn’t just about modernizing your tech stack—it’s about giving your SOC, LP, and operations leaders the visibility and automation they need to protect people, reduce loss, and respond faster, without added complexity or headcount.”
Built For Retail Integrators, Security Partners & End Users Alike
The PDK + Solink integration isn’t just beneficial for end‑users as it simultaneously empowers channel partners and integrators with:
A modern, scalable cloud security stack
A compelling bundled solution for retail customers
Tools to support complex ORC and loss prevention challenges
Strong differentiation in a crowded security market
Retail customers increasingly demand technology that goes beyond basic detection — they want context, intelligence, and speedy ROI — and the PDK + Solink integration does just that.
“With Solink and ProdataKey, we’ve focused on workflow-level value - making sure access events are searchable, filterable, and visually linked to video in ways that make sense to front-line users. Because both platforms are cloud-first, the integration is also easier to deploy and scale across many locations, without custom development or heavy maintenance.”
Chris Wolski, Solink VP of Product Marketing and Market Strategy
A Scalable, No-Nonsense Approach to Retail Security
As retail crime patterns evolve and grow more sophisticated, traditional standalone systems are no longer enough. Retailers need:
rapid access to context‑driven insights
correlated video + access control + POS data
smarter response workflows
scalable, cloud‑managed solutions
The PDK + Solink integration answers these needs by unifying critical data streams into one powerful platform — helping retailers reduce risk, improve investigations, and better protect people and merchandise. “Customer expectations have undergone a massive shift. For a long time, 'unified' just meant that two systems lived on the same server,” says Chris. “But today, customers expect Operational Simplicity and Cross-Functional ROI. Customer expectations have moved from 'keep the bad guys out' to 'help me run a better business’ which is exactly what the PDK + Solink integration does.”
About ProdataKey
ProdataKey (PDK) is a leading innovator of networked cloud-based access control products and services. The company’s PDK.io cloud platform allows for complete system management and control through any web-connected device, anywhere, anytime. PDK delivers an unparalleled user experience as well as the highest levels of security, safety, and data privacy. For more information, visit prodatakey.com.
About Solink
Solink is a world-class business with an industry-changing video security system, offering brick-and-mortar businesses a smart way to manage operations, security, and loss prevention. With tens of thousands of sites using Solink in more than 32 countries, Solink acts as the hub of business operations, security and loss prevention strategies for global brands. For more information, visit solink.com.
