The Pennsylvania State University, better known as Penn State, is a public research university with a network of 24 campuses, including nine with on-campus residence halls, located throughout the state.
The Pennsylvania State University, better known as Penn State, is a public research university with a network of 24 campuses, including nine with on-campus residence halls, located throughout the state.
As part of a systemwide upgrade, the eight residential campuses under the domain of Commonwealth Campus Housing and Food Services, began the move to a single security and event management platform to support their video and access control systems, including a new system of wireless locks and upgraded IP cameras, for the residence halls and some outside group facilities such as child-care and student centers.
Challenges
Penn State, with its myriad campuses across Pennsylvania, was operating on multiple and disparate platforms for its academic and physical security systems. Further, they wished to use
Tyco Security Products’ Software House
C•CURE 9000 software as the standard security management platform integrated among the University and its campuses.
With a decision made to standardize on C•CURE 9000 for the access control system, the university also decided to simultaneously upgrade its wireless locking system. That project presented the new challenge of converting hundreds of locks without compromising access to doors or presenting unnecessary security issues during the conversion process.
In fact, logistics proved to be one of the greatest challenges as the campuses involved spread from one end of the state to the other — more than a seven-hour’s drive apart from the farthest campuses. Therefore, having a hands-on approach by a single person or integration office wasn’t possible. All three offices of Siemens in Pennsylvania — Harrisburg, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh — aided in managing the year-long project for the Commonwealth Campus Housing and Food Services.
The solution
As a long-time user of STANLEY locking products, and with STANLEY Wi-Q wireless locks now integrated with the C•CURE 9000 platform, the university system began the process of converting more than 720 locks in a dozen residence halls. This project would affect the housing for more than 1,200 students at five campuses.
The switch to wireless locks improved the ability for programming and monitoring while also providing easier operational use. The wireless locks, which are mounted on the residence room doors, communicate with a STANLEY Wi-Q portal gateway — there are about 90 within the system — which in turn communicate with the C•CURE 9000 software.
The same card that accesses the wireless room locks used for hard-wired doors throughout the campuses, as well as card readers for copiers, laundry machines, and cash registers.
The STANLEY Wi-Q wireless locks offered a tracking piece that regular keys wouldn’t provide and, without having to rely on conventional locking systems, the campuses could cut down on the need for locksmiths and having to change out cores at the door.
By integrating with C•CURE 9000, Penn State security personnel could see audit data concerning when a door was offline through the system’s journal feature, if information on door status was changed. Over 110 iSTAR door controller panels monitor door data throughout the campuses, including at University Park, Penn State’s largest campus.
The actual user data from the STANLEY Wi-Qlocks is considered private, but some of the information can be used in the aggregate or, in the case of an alleged criminal act, shared with police.
Even though the system was live during the transition, converting the residence halls from hard wired to wireless locks went smoothly, thanks to Siemens’ strategy of reconfiguring one door at a time, said William Werkiser, Senior Project Manager at Siemens. This part of the project also was planned for the summer months, when the residence halls were mostly unoccupied.
Another critical component of the upgrade was the addition of nearly 900 primarily Illustra IP mini-dome cameras at the entrances and perimeter of the residence halls and other campus buildings that are linked to the American Dynamics victor video management system.
The clear and crisp high-definition video from the Illustra Mini-Domes make them ideal for detecting mustsee details, such as numbers on license plates, faces and even blurred objects and capturing them at full frame rates, in conditions ranging from full sun to blackout conditions.
Several facilities at Penn State’s University Park campus were also migrated to the victor platform, with the assistance of systems integration
The university's C•CURE 9000 security management
system made possible the conversion of more than
a dozen residence halls to STANLEY Wi-Q wireless
locks, improving programming and monitoring
while also providing easier operational use.
firms Tyco Integrated Security, AccessSI, and Securitas. Sean Costella, Assistant Director of Network and Support Operations at Penn State, found the victor client software easy to manage with an intuitive interface that required little to no training time for his team.
The university has several business groups that need access to video, but not every group needs to see it all. Within victor’s site manager feature, Costella can create boundaries so different groups have access only to the video pertinent to their needs.
One of the benefits of the new system is that it helps Penn State comply with a more restricted video access policy, said Walker. Only three Housing and Food Services management positions have access to all video from the 23 VideoEdge NVRs and just a few, mainly on the food services side, have access to live video for business purposes — such as monitoring food lines.
A new system-wide user group has formed to share details about how to get the most out of the shared system. During the conversion, they also tapped into the Penn State networking services group, which provisioned a second network that served as a host for all of the end-point devices.
C•CURE 9000 is also serving as the backbone for integration with other systems employed by Housing and Food Services and Residence Life, such as the university’s eLiving platform that is used for tracking housing contracts and room assignments. The information from eLiving now goes directly into C•CURE 9000. The same is true of an access management system for staff and non-student access to residence halls, such as vendor access. It now has integrations with C•CURE 9000 to streamline and automate processes as well as enable stricter controls.