Secure remote connectivity: Protecting retail devices from anywhere

Every device on your store floor is working double duty.

It’s helping your team move faster, serve better, and keep shelves stocked. But it’s also another endpoint to secure and manage across a variety of locations. As well as another way into your network if something goes wrong.

You’re most likely familiar with this tension. You’re expected to drive innovation, reduce downtime, and keep every device locked down—without slowing the business down.

Against this backdrop, secure remote connectivity is essential for today's retail environments, allowing IT teams to support and protect devices.

The hard part? Finding a secure remote-connectivity solution that does all of that without adding friction.

In this article:

• Retail and the increasingly large number of connected devices
• The ripple effect across retail operations when devices fail
• How Tensor delivers secure remote connectivity without slowing momentum
• Case study: Tensor in action
• Summary

Retail and the increasingly large number of connected devices

Your stores depend on a wide mix of connected devices—self-checkouts, handheld scanners, tablets, and digital signage—all working across different systems, brands, and locations.

Each one plays a specific role in delivering faster, more personalized service. In fact, according to IDC reports, global shipments of digital signage grew 26% after the pandemic, showing just how much tech is being added to stores.

However, while more devices offer more capabilities, they also add complexity.

Your IT teams are responsible for supporting a wide range of systems across multiple locations, often without the luxury of on-site help. Many stores rely mainly on remote IT support, which creates challenges in both visibility and response time.

In fact, 28% of companies report that remote IT support is one of their biggest obstacles. This fragmentation means that when something goes wrong—whether it’s a customer-facing device or a back-end system—IT teams often can’t act quickly. This can lead to longer downtimes and more widespread disruption.

When a self-checkout stalls or a point-of-sale (POS) tablet crashes, it affects more than just that device:

• Customers wait longer. Frustration rises, and satisfaction drops.
  
• Staff are pulled from other tasks. Efficiency dips, and service slows.
  
• Sales opportunities are lost. One failed system can mean hundreds in lost revenue in just an hour.

In fact, large retailers can lose up to USD 5 million in revenue for just one hour of POS downtime. And with more than 550,000 unfilled retail jobs in the US and another 79,000 in the UK, any operational disruption places additional strain on already short-staffed teams.

The root cause is often simple: a missed update, a misconfigured permission, or a slow remote response. When systems are distributed and maintained manually, downtime is hard to avoid.

But technical failure isn’t the only concern.

Maintenance access—a routine part of keeping systems running—can introduce serious risk. Devices need patches, diagnostics, and intervention. But when those access points are left open or unmanaged, they become weak spots in your IT security.

Additionally, former employees may still have login credentials. Vendors may use generic or insecure access tools. Devices may not verify the identity of incoming connections. These gaps are easy to overlook—and hard to track—especially at scale.

The ripple effect across retail operations when devices fail

And it’s not just internal risk. Retail IT environments rely on entire webs of third-party vendors, logistics providers, and external systems. If even one of those partners has weak security hygiene, your entire network could be exposed. Without centralized control and oversight, small issues escalate quickly.

This is why some IT teams apply zero-trust principles to their systems. No user, device, or system is trusted by default. Every access request must prove it belongs—and that trust is continuously verified throughout the session.

How Tensor delivers secure remote connectivity without slowing momentum

Keeping up with retail’s pace isn’t just about adding more devices. It’s about managing who has access, when, and how—without increasing risk or slowing down operations.

TeamViewer Tensor helps your IT team keep systems secure and responsive as retail environments scale.

Here’s how.

Securing point-of-sale systems and expanding endpoints

From POS tablets to digital signage and smart shelving, your retail devices are diverse, distributed, and always on. Each one improves operations but also expands your attack surface.

Tensor helps IT stay ahead of that growth with strong identity verification, device-level trust policies, and granular role-based access control. With SAML 2.0 integration, access can be managed centrally, ensuring only approved users connect to critical systems.

Combining two-factor authentication and device authorization offers a layered approach to security which prevents unauthorized sessions—even if credentials are stolen. In addition, if a staff member moves departments or leaves the business, their access disappears automatically.

This means your growing fleet of store devices doesn’t turn into a growing list of vulnerabilities.

Managing third-party risk across your vendor ecosystem

Retail operations rely on dozens of external players—from payment system providers to logistics tech partners. These vendors often need direct access to in-store systems, but each new connection introduces risk.

Tensor applies the same zero-trust standards to every session, whether it comes from an internal team or a third-party partner. You can define access policies that limit vendor sessions by time, device, or function—and leverage ‘Bring Your Own Certificate’ (BYOC) capabilities to use your own custom certificates to authenticate the devices, ensuring only verified endpoints can initiate TeamViewer connections.

That makes it easier to support collaboration without compromising security. And it gives you full visibility into external access, so you can enforce your policies consistently, even outside your organization.

Reducing exposure from high turnover and insider threats

Retail moves fast—and so do its people. From seasonal staff to in-store contractors, turnover is part of the model. But without airtight identity management, that constant churn can leave systems exposed.

Tensor helps IT control access dynamically. By integrating with your identity provider, permissions are tied to roles, not individuals. When someone leaves or changes jobs, they’re automatically offboarded from the systems they no longer need.

Session verification and conditional access policies add another layer of defense—blocking login attempts outside of pre-defined conditions, even if someone still has credentials.

This reduces the window for insider threats and helps IT teams stay in control, even when people come and go.

Enabling secure remote connectivity for distributed teams

In many retail environments, there aren’t any on-site IT personnel. Store teams depend on secure remote connectivity and support to fix issues, push updates, and troubleshoot hardware. If that access isn’t secured effectively, every support session becomes a possible entry point.

Tensor provides encrypted, high-speed remote access that doesn’t require constant trust. Its zero-trust model verifies user identity and session integrity throughout the entire connection—not just at login.

Remote IT teams can support on-site staff quickly without relying on open ports, VPN tunnels, or risky workarounds. And because access is centrally managed, admins have a clear view of who’s connecting and why—no matter where the user is based.

Meeting compliance expectations without added overhead

Retailers face growing regulatory pressure around data protection from GDPR and CPRA. Audits require clear records of who accessed systems, what they did, and whether policies were enforced.

Tensor helps your teams prove compliance without extra administrative efforts. How? Every remote session can be recorded and stored, and full audit logs are generated automatically. These records integrate into your existing SIEM tools, giving security teams centralized oversight without creating parallel processes.

That reduces the time spent preparing for audits—and the risk of non-compliance from unmonitored activity. Instead of treating compliance as a separate task, it becomes a built-in part of IT operations.

Case study: Tensor in action

With more than 400 stores worldwide, the Australian luxury cosmetic brand, Aesop, needed to simplify how its IT team supported point-of-sale systems and in-store devices. With staff often spread across different countries and time zones, relying on local intervention slowed things down and created inconsistent results.

By implementing Tensor, Aesop gained the ability to centrally manage device access and enforce strict authentication policies. Their IT team could remotely assist stores, monitor activity in real time, and ensure that only trusted users and devices could access their systems.

Crucially, they were also able to reduce downtime, improve the consistency of support, and increase visibility without expanding their IT footprint.

“Aesop vets all vendors through a third-party risk process based on criticality. TeamViewer Tensor meets our high-security needs, enabling MFA for all users—cloud-based and distributed—without exposing the system to the internet.”—Gabriel Egan, Head of Global Support, Infrastructure and Operations at Aesop

Discover how Aesop improved security and reduced downtime across 400+ stores with Tensor

Summary

Retail tech isn’t slowing down—and neither are the threats targeting modern store environments. With the rise of connected devices, secure remote connectivity is vital for protecting and supporting your retail IT ecosystem. This means having a strategy for how to secure connected retail devices that doesn’t compromise agility.

Tensor helps you stay ahead. It brings together centralized access control, zero-trust security, and audit-ready visibility in one scalable solution.

You can move quickly, support efficiently, and protect consistently—without slowing operations or exposing your systems.