Operating a large university campus in an urban setting can be challenging enough.
When a campus spans dozens of dispersed buildings that house expensive equipment and high-value student work, the challenge becomes even more complex. The Academy of Art University in San Francisco met these challenges with an access control system that simultaneously delivers the security it needs along with important new capabilities and an improved campus experience.
Let’s take a look at how this esteemed institution of higher education is protecting its students, faculty and facilities with rigorous security measures and systems. Necessary to this achievement is the guiding hand of a trusted systems integrator, Microbiz Security Co., along with vendor expertise provided by HID Global and others.
Scalable System Keeps Doors Locked 24/7
By the mid-2000s, the Academy of Art University occupied about 20 buildings, including classrooms, offices and residential halls that were scattered across the city. Each location had multiple points of access, and was protected only by basic locks and metal keys.
The inadequate security of this arrangement became painfully apparent after a daytime burglary at one of the academic buildings resulted in significant property losses. According to the campus safety director, Mike Petricca, this was unacceptable for a university that prides itself in giving students a safe place to learn as well as nurture their creativity while devoting countless hours developing valuable work portfolios.
To improve security, the university took what previously was a one-man campus safety organization augmented by security guards and replaced it with an organization spanning 130 employees, a 24-hour patrol team, a campus communications center with emergency dispatching service, and round-the-clock safety hosts stationed at most buildings.
Additionally, the university embarked on a program to secure every building across its widely dispersed campus, which today totals 50 buildings and counting. Campus officials believe they have established the first university in the nation with the capability to completely lock down with all access controlled through a single, centralized system.
“We found out that locking the doors 24/7 at all of our buildings was the best way to prevent crime. No other university that I know of locks every single door on campus, including residential halls, labs, museums, whatever the building might be. We lock the doors 24/7,” Petricca says. “The most efficient way to do that is with card access control. Partnering with Microbiz and HID really fit that requirement.”
In addition to increasing campus safety and security, the university also needed its access control system to be easily scalable without forfeiting earlier investments.
Meeting the twin needs for both security and expansion would require a move to a system based on an open architecture that could support multiple card technologies and future enhancements. With this platform in place, the university’s cardholders would eventually be able to utilize credentials for multiple purposes beyond opening doors.
Integrator Deploys 3 Specialist Teams for Project
The Academy of Art University leveraged the expertise of Microbiz Security to design and install the new access control solution.
Microbiz recommended HID’s iCLASS SE platform, including the multiCLASS SE readers that support both its Indala low-frequency, entry-level proximity cards for physical access control, as well as HID Global’s iCLASS SE high-security smartcard credentials. The iCLASS SE platform can be used with iCLASS, MIFARE and DESFire card technology, as well as iCLASS Seos high-security smartcard credentials.
“If government agencies need access to any of the university’s locations, they can easily add them in and accommodate them,” says Dave Chritton, Microbiz president and CFO. “It can read MIFARE, which is used by government agencies, and the city of San Francisco [fire and police departments] is using the Indala format.”
Both iCLASS SE and iCLASS Seos card technology use HID Global’s Secure Identity Object (SIO) data model, which represents many forms of identity information on any device that has been enabled to work within the secure boundary and central identity-management ecosystem of the company’s Trusted Identity Platform (TIP).
TIP and SIOs enable iCLASS Seos credentials to be carried inside Near Field Communications (NFC)-enabled smartphones in a managed access environment. The Academy of Art sees this as an important future capability that will be extremely attractive to students, faculty and staff who rely more and more heavily on smartphones for a variety of daily tasks. In fact, Petricca has lobbied for the university to be selected for an NFC pilot program.
“That seems like a no-brainer to me. As soon as it gets figured out, including policies and procedures sent and defined, we will leverage that to the hilt,” he says. “College students do not want an ID card hanging around their neck. We are fighting that battle every day. I see NFC as a quicker way to get them to comply and carry their credential with them.”
In the first two months after initiating deployment, the university installed approximately 40 multiCLASS readers at 14 buildings. It has since installed a total of nearly 260 readers at all campus buildings, including 17 residence halls. Every residential hall and computer lab is now protected, and the university continues to install new readers as it acquires buildings and adds or reconfigures rooms to house valuable equipment and assets.
The security management system resides on a virtual server. It talks to all of the university’s locations through its network to a Honeywell Pro-Watch 6000 IC board. It controls multiple reader boards and readers at all sites.
“All 50 locations are networked together. If you add a card, it shoots it out to all 50 sites pretty much instantaneously,” Chritton says. “Conversely, if you drop out of school, their Peoplesoft [enterprise management] system turns you off at all 50 sites pretty much instantaneously.”
Program Ensures Cards Can’t Be Duplicated
The university has completely substituted mag-stripe cards and is now issuing ID credentials under HID Global’s Corporate 1000 program, which provides a managed 35-bit format that is developed specifically for each individual end-user client.
This format delivers additional security for the cards and data in the organization’s physical access control system using iCLASS technology, and enables it to standardize on one card for the system.
Within the Corporate 1000 program, campuses can be provided with roughly one million individual card numbers for their assigned format. Card numbers are tracked in the manufacturing process to ensure they cannot not be duplicated. Due to the size of the available card population, the hospital, school district or college is assured that cards in the desired format will be available for years to come, explains Brett St. Pierre, director of business development, education solutions, HID Global.
“This is especially beneficial for organizations with large card and/or reader populations or that are expecting to grow over time. They might also have multiple locations and/or decentralized decision-making on card purchases,” he says.
Approximately 25,000 cards are in use at the university at any given time. The solution automatically turns the cards off at the conclusion of one semester and back on again at the beginning of the next, or permanently disables the student’s identity following their resignation or failure to re-enroll. The same cards can also be used to enter Urban Knights sporting events or make purchases using Knight Kash, the university’s debit program for meals and cashless vending, as well as at off-campus merchant partner establishments.
The university has realized a number of important benefits from its new access control system, including documented reductions in theft even as enrollment has increased, and an improved campus experience. The system has also significantly improved reporting capabilities, enabling the security team, for instance, to provide valuable input about building usage that resulted in new building access hours and policies.
“We’ve certainly seen a lot of change at our campus, in terms of technologies, policies and procedures, and it was all necessary in order for us to achieve the security we needed, along with an enhanced experience for everyone that spends time here,” Petricca says. “With our new access control foundation in place, we can now embrace change and rely on this system infrastructure to support future improvements that will benefit faculty and staff, and for students and their parents.”
Communication Center Replicates 911 Call Center
Petricca conceived the university’s communications center based on his extensive experience in law enforcement and with 911 call centers. He is a former chief of police of Webster City, Iowa. From 1999 through 2006, Petricca managed AT&T’s public safety services team, driving new 911 and public safety code service technologies with police, fire and EMS agencies throughout the United States.
The university’s networked security systems — including access control, intrusion alarms and video surveillance — are centrally managed from the communications center.
Petricca leverages the same best practices for the comm center that he relied on to operate 911 centers. Via the campus’ phone system, security personnel receive notifications when a 911 call is made on campus. The calls are not physically answered but security staffers are notified of emergency calls upon which they can dispatch a patrol officer to the site.
“Our 24/7 communications center is very robust and our students and staff rely on it for everything that happens on campus. We also manage our buses out of our comm center,” Petricca says. “It is a one-stop shop that students can come to for escorts, for reporting crime or needing help. Through the comm center we have our fingers in every building on campus.”
The university contracts with a vendor located off campus to answer fire-related calls. The vendor will contact the comm center when a fire alarm is submitted. The campus’ emergency communications system is also managed from the comm center. The system can blast out text messages to students and staff, as well as post messages to flat screen monitors located in all lobbies, cafeterias and residence halls.
Silent intrusion alarms at all university buildings are handled by the comm center. Monitoring personnel can pull up camera feeds where an alarm was initiated and concurrently communicate to a guarding patrol team via radio.
“If they see anything unusual we will call 911 to get police en route at the same time. Then they are also checking the card access system to see if anybody has swiped in and set off the alarm,” Petricca explains. “Nine times out of 10, something tripped the alarm, but once in a while it is a person breaking in.”
The university deployed its own network and backup modules on which to operate the intrusion alarms, thereby doing away with the cost of traditional phone lines and monthly monitoring.
An interoperability solution gives the university’s campus safety department the capability to provide the San Francisco Police Department with real-time feeds from the 700 or so video surveillance cameras located across all its sites. The university operates a video management system (VMS) by Salient Systems on which a mix of analog and IP cameras are administered.
Video feeds are recorded in server closets that are deployed at most of the university’s locations. For those sites without a server room, the campus security department leverages its robust network to send video signals to record at other locations.
“We have 30-day video storage. We have so many cameras and cover so many city streets that we capture a lot of crimes in progress,” Petricca says. “The police come to us every week and request video, and a lot of times we help solve crimes.”
Rodney Bosch is the senior editor for Security Sales & Integration magazine.
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