When Scott McInturf arrived on campus in 2003, there wasn’t a comprehensive security plan or organized procurement model for security integration. “There had been a lot of single system purchases, it was very scattered. The College of Veterinary Medicine was doing one thing, Toxicology another, and University Housing something else. We had disparate systems, with different sourcing; there was a real lack of cohesiveness.”
North Carolina State University, located in Raleigh, NC, has approximately 35,000 students, 8000 faculty and staff, over 2000 acres, 500 buildings, which includes critical infrastructure such as a nuclear reactor, hazardous material labs, and animal handling areas. After the 2007 tragedy at Virginia Tech, universities have redoubled efforts to deploy security technologies that more effectively protect people and assets while still maintaining a relatively open environment, which is a hallmark of America’s universities.
Protecting a Small Town While Still Maintaining Openness
“NC State is the size of a small town,” said Scott McInturf, Director of Security Applications and Technologies (SAT). “Our job is to provide the technology to efficiently and effectively protect all these assets in an urban environment with a dynamic population comprising as many as 80,000 people on some days”
One of the motivating factors to bring together a comprehensive security system for an entire campus was something as simple as a key, and the asset that made it all possible was the campus network . NCSU has over 35,000 doors, with exponentially more keys and master keys. McInturf recounted how University Dining did a study that quantified losing a master key could cost as much as $60,000 in re-keying costs alone. “And what’s worse, if we lose the master a week after we’ve re-keyed, we’re back where we started.”
Standardizing Access Control
The university decided it would standardize on a door access system to overcome the “key control” problem, but no one was sure who would be in charge and how to manage and grow this new campus-wide system. The AllCampus Network (precursor to SAT) volunteered to administrate the fledging initiative and McInturf was hired to administrate the system. “I saw this as a growth opportunity. We were fortunate to have a network that would support just about anything we wanted to do. And the network was a very unifying factor.”
Software House’s C-Cure 800 now provides access control and management to over 600 doors, elevators, and high-value equipment on campus. Approximately 75% of the university’s 500-plus buildings and facilities, across more than 40 departments, are managed by the system over the campus network. Not only does the Software House system manage access security, it also provides valuable audit trails for operations and management purposes and usage records that some departments are planning to utilize to charge other departments or outside parties for use of their assets and/or space.
McInturf and his team had encouragement and support from university upper management, but as he sees it, it was also a grass roots, bottom-up effort “selling the value” of unified systems to each department who funded the projects. This experience would lay the groundwork and provide a model for the even more ambitious IP video surveillance program to come.
Extending the Model to Video Surveillance
“I’ve always been a big proponent of understanding the technology you’re purchasing,” said McInturf. With Signet Technologies, we’ve worked closely with Joe Walker and our two teams work very well together—it’s a true partnership.”
With Signet Technologies, NC State spent one year evaluating network video management systems. Key selection criteria included scalability, capability to fully utilize and sit atop the existing campus network, and integration capability with future security management systems. The DVTel intelligent Security Operations Center (iSOC) platform, with the Network Video Management System (NVMS) at its core, was selected as the primary command and control management because it successfully met these criteria, but it also offered much more. The NVMS provides a highly user-friendly interface and, importantly, it easily partitions so that each individual “customer” department accesses only their video data while University Police and other university staff have access to all video. “The DVTel system fit our criteria: we didn’t need a separate, dedicated security network and it has been growing with our needs as we rapidly add users and cameras,” said McInturf.
The NC State installation will soon number 650 cameras located in multiple departments across campus. The university network has ample capacity for the project to scale substantially as demand and budget dictate. The project is unique and innovative in that one department, Security Applications and Technologies (SAT), manages the servers and storage (HP), and overall technology while offering each campus department the opportunity to purchase and integrate the cameras they need into the campus standard.
Servicing a Wide Array of Customers
The university’s current bond issue provided $500 million for new construction, and as new buildings are built or when a department expresses security concerns, SAT, in conjunction with the University Police, serves as a security consultant, providing the standards and criteria new users need to address. All parties agree on a security template for the building(s) and SAT and Signet Technologies supply each customer with budgets, project management, and technical support. McInturf’s customers include the department heads of academic and administrative departments, like Housing and University Dining, and also non-NCSU customers located on the Centennial Campus such as state government departments and private corporations.
Video is used for some live monitoring and extensive incident review. All video is maintained in a central secure location, so departments don’t need to manage this responsibility and the university knows that data is safely stored. Each department has access to only their camera data, so they are able to maintain their systems with autonomy while still enjoying significant economies of scale and being part of a larger campus-wide system.
The Integrator Partner
A key success factor for the project is the university’s procurement vehicle. The university pre-qualifies vendors to ensure they meet strict criteria in terms of product, service, and training. Once a vendor is pre-qualified, the university can award contracts based on merit rather than a low bid scenario where an unqualified vendor may under-bid an incumbent vendor and then not provide a quality product. This procurement system set the stage for SAT to standardize on certain equipment and software and to develop long-term relationships mutually beneficial to both parties.
For all new construction, planning and installation of the security component—whether in a campus convenience store or the Physics department—is managed in a uniform, proven manner. McInturf and his staff are responsible for all security systems, so his customers know where to go with questions and McInturf in turn is working with a select group of proven partners.
This system has been particularly important and productive in SAT’s relationship with the integrator, Signet. “We’ve got a lot of challenges, so Joe Walker has been instrumental to our success.”
Project Innovation Highlights
NC State is a model project for other universities and multi-site, campus installations: a single, central managing organization provides the transmission, storage, and management of security infrastructure such as video, burglar/panic alarms, and access control to different “customers” who use the infrastructure. The departments get in-house expertise and service, and superior integration, and the university knows the campus is safer, costs are managed effectively, and there is uniformity in quality and operations.
- Very early, McInturf determined that the university’s robust network provided the unifying element for a campus-wide security model.
- By exploiting a conspicuous “pain point,” SAT moved to solve the key control problem by deploying a technological upgrade for access control and then, going further, creating a model for standardizing the installation and procurement of access control across the campus.
- The partnership between NCSU and Signet Technologies has provided a solid foundation for the success achieved to date. As time has gone on, the two parties have found a perfect delineation of roles—Signet stays on the cutting edge of technology, SAT hones the implementation design, and together they map out the long-term plan—while simultaneously integrating their teams to achieve the most effective security system at the best cost.
- The C-Cure access control infrastructure has been implemented in roughly 75% of campus buildings, securing students, staff and critical sites like nuclear and biological materials, while also providing essential audit and facility use data the campus plans to exploit as roll out continues.
- As the command and control software, the DVTel iSOC NVMS accesses and correlates camera data from approximately 650 cameras and counting. The cameras are deployed throughout the campus and SAT currently serves over 80 separate administrative groups.
- Video is used for live “hot spot” monitoring and extensive incident review. The NVMS’s partitioning capabilities enable each department to view only their video while senior university administrators, security personnel, and police/fire can access all video feeds.
- The DVTel system’s flexibility, ease of installation, and scalability fits NC State’s current demands and its ambitious plans for growth: “With the expansion of campus and other State agencies using our system, this system could grow to thousands of cameras,” McInturf asserted.
- Security Applications and Technologies stores and maintains all video for 30 days and manages the overall infrastructure. End user departments are responsible only for the operation of their own cameras—everything else is taken care of for the customer.
- While each department has access only to their camera data and their access control data, they can maintain their systems with autonomy while still being part of a larger campus-wide system that offers system uniformity, economies of scale, and constant innovation and improvement with each new installation.
- The DVTel system has proven successful in meeting a varied set of demands. For special needs such as a cash counting room and in the rare books section of the library, individual cameras are programmed to record at higher frame rates and to store video for longer periods of time. The rare books section of the library stores data for 365 days.
- Importantly, the system has proven effective in using video data not only to solve crimes but also as a training tool to improve operations in university convenience stores and dining halls.
Innovation Never Rests
As the partnership between NCSU’s SAT and Signet Technologies continues to expand and their number of customers grows as well, McInturf and Walker are constantly evaluating new technologies and methods to expand the project and make it even more efficient and effective. Some ideas currently being evaluated include:
- The team is testing a range of IP and megapixel cameras for future deployment.
- Currently, all parking gates are managed by a separate software program and McInturf is assessing the integration of parking management into the access control system to unify data and reduce the number of systems needed to manage and maintain.
- Continued expansion of services to corporate and government customers on Centennial Campus to increase project revenues, not just cut costs.
- Migration to “virtual server” technology that shares hardware resources. Virtual environments share processing power to cut cost and hardware needs, which is also good for the environment by eliminating many of those server boxes.
- Establish a Command and Control Center where all data and all alarms will be managed to back up and supplement each department user.
- “We’re continually looking at analytics and what can work for us in a campus environment, but we need to supplement any analytics with dedicated monitoring—analysis on motion in a campus environment just won’t work,” concluded McInturf.
- Signet continues to explore analytics with the SAT group: analytics for people counting and crowd management. Walker and McInturf are working on plans for video surveillance at entrance points for the entire campus for license plate recognition and to set up a “virtual gate” using RFID technology to monitor parking permits when entering campus.
NCSU, SAT, and Signet have accomplished a tremendous amount in less than five years, but one of the biggest accomplishments is how Scott McInturf views SAT’s role, “We provide a turn-key package that sits on this highly robust network. We are one stop shop for our customers—heads of academic and administrative departments; cafeterias, housing and the like. SAT does it all from needs assessment to plan to installation and then maintenance. Just as important, we provide a business management tool for the C Stores (retails shops), Port City Java, the cafeterias, and certain labs, by providing video for training and operations and secure access control audit trails to monitor schedules and usage to improve operations and produce revenues.”
