While keeping uninvited persons off the property is fundamental to loss prevention, employees, customers, and other visitors, who have legitimate access, may still be the cause of a loss situation.

By augmenting access surveillance with general area observation, such events can be captured effectively for accident analysis and loss mitigation. A well-designed system, where fixed and moving cameras overlap large areas, and are set up to mutually trigger recording, allows for a broad coverage while still being cost effective.

In situations where overlapping coverage is not practical, "stepped" cameras that cover various points along or around a space can be used to determine what persons occupied it at the time of the event, even if the actual event occurred off-camera. While this may not be as desirable a solution as a complete visual record, it does provide some method of eliminating potential persons of interest.