Technology Integration at Banks
Physical access control systems used to be separated from the rest of an organization's IT department in the past few decades. Furthermore they were usually placed within the security department of an institution. For now, the IT department has successfully came up with an entirely different access system for logical or network access.
However, nowadays that is no longer the standard or preferred access control atmosphere. Communication between the security and IT departments has become more critical than ever due to this physical access control system prototype shift. Not only makes economic sense, but it makes security sense, as well. Not only does it make sense, from a financial aspect, to share the same infrastructure between the security and IT departments, but it makes sense from an economic aspect as well.
The job of physical security in a bank is to protect it physically. On the other hand, it is the job of the Information Technology to virtually protect the security networks of the facility. The security goals of a facility are guaranteed to be achieved through a newly formed partnership that has between the IT and physical security departments. Even though the roles of these two departments are different, their final objective is identical. Through teaming up and sharing the work load they have been able to achieve a remarkable amount of tasks that obviously could not have been accomplished without their combined efforts.
For example, a popular city bank has been utilizing surveillance supervision and GE's Picture Perfect access control system at its command center and more than forty other locations since the start of the nineties. Anyone can easily create and support an infinite quantity of badge holders and card readers by using it. Features such as occupancy control and database partitioning are also provided by the system. While maintaining centralized control, bank officials can still delegate facility administration. Obviously, the bank is supplied with audit trails and real-time supervision.
This city bank is also in the process of incorporating the March Networks DVRs and the Picture Perfect system into the GE MASterMind central station batch (formerly known as Monitoring Automation systems). This will permit workers to observe and react to all types of alarms, regardless of whether it is generated from a fire panel or a standard burglary or through the card access system in a single network. The CCTV incorporation facilitates immediate admission to any related video data. Furthermore, this integration enables the surveillance system to rapidly send high-quality photos via e-mail to the authorized security personnel. in a number of cases this has directly resulted in apprehension.
On top of being surveyed by the central station, the Picture Perfect system is incorporated with the e-mail network of the city Bank. This will facilitate that certain high- security alarms will instantaneously be sent out to personal computers as an email or as text messaging to specified cell phones. Within a few seconds of the alarm being triggered the employees generally receive the notification messages. This enables the security officials to pursue standard dispatch operations as the top security individuals are instantly notified.
Even though facilities are spread throughout nine states, security can achieve tighter control and use of personnel at maximum efficiencies, by centralizing the security operations.
Furthermore, the system enables security to choose exactly who gets access to specific areas and at what specific time of the day. Adding on, this data can be e-mailed or printed out as a report or survey. For instance, surveillance personnel can enter a card holder's name and verify the exact time and location that this person exited or entered a vicinity.

Extended capabilities
Along with March Networks' DVRs the security management system, have greatly assisted in unraveling other problems not directly linked to security matters. As an example, a few complaints were received that there were a group of unidentified individuals entering a facility that had recently initiated. The officials of the bank were able to quickly create reports showing the quantity of reader swipes in a given time and pull up visual footage lips of the access areas during peak times of operation.
This evidently illustrated that the security gateways were functioning effectively enough to take care of the traffic coming in and out the facility. However, the real issue was directly linked to how the workers used the revolving gateways. The majority of these employees would stand directly facing the door while looking for their access cards. Others try to enter while carrying large belongings. Upon realizing the situation, the bank was then able to inform workers and employees about the issue and was successful of eliminating the problem from happening in the future.

Understanding the Operation of the system
For our city bank, the surveillance observation network not only handles systems of access control, but operates in relation with CCTV security and fire alarm operations. Generally speaking a redundant server configuration is often used in these operations. Most of the time, these machines will be running the Red Hat Linux operating system. It is clearly obvious that the security management system runs on the support of an IT network. A hot backup server guarantees no loss of operation by ensuring that if the primary machine goes down, the backup will immediately take over. It is also worth noting that the backup server is usually located in a separate location in another part of the country.
Close to ten client workstations are used to operate the surveillance administration system. About seven of these clients are regular workstations designated for alarm control and system management. The remaining three stations are used for making badges for the workers, which are regularly used at card reader panels to gain access to the various regions of the facility. This city bank was eventually able to successfully setting up several hundred readers since installing its first version of the surveillance control network, and it plans to add more as it continues to expand into other states in the country.
The surveillance control and access control system is exploited in all corporate offices of this city bank, which is a good thing since these offices are often located in denser downtown areas which makes them more susceptible to attacks and other illegal incidents. The surveillance system manages more than a thousand doors and gateways throughout the bank's locations which cover an area close to nine states, some facilities even have both inbound and outbound card readers to further guarantee the security of the building.
The latest security installation includes GE's new Transition card readers; these will greatly facilitate the transition to new credentials since these machines can read most types of access control cards including smart cards and all popular proximity cards. To keep up with the rapidly advancing security technology, the bank is switching from magnetic-stripe to Mifare security access cards. To address the security needs of high-risk areas the bank has installed biometric readers.
The surveillance administration system also enables the surveillance personnel and security officials of remotely managing the functions of an access control system. Among these various functions is the ability to schedule what time gateways and doors will unlock and lock in other states. Among the helpful features is the automatic time. During the past few years, security officials had to manually account for the various time zones. However currently all what has to be done is, for example, schedule a gate to unlock at 9 a.m., and the system will automatically convert and adjust to the time zone for that specific gate.
Both fire alarm systems and CCTV surveillance cameras operate in combination with the Picture Perfect security network. surveillance officials can find out who really used a given door and at what time by going to the camera which are usually set up to constantly record. This new security innovation allows the bank’s authorities to visually see and identify the individuals using doors synchronized to the exact time (sometimes to the second) that the door was utilized. When investigating a specific incident, security officials can take a look at a badge activity report and draw out the precise time from the March Digital Video Recorder.

Benefits of Having New Features
This city bank was amongst the earliest properties to publicly use the Picture Perfect 3.0 beta application. This latest version equipped the security officials with a variety of enhanced features and gave them unique security capabilities to enhance their security levels. The security officials are now customizing forms for better presentation for the security personnel as well as altering the screen so that diverse tasks are viewed in a more organized manner, depending on what the security observer is dealing with.
The bank can add its own features to customize the system even further using database triggers. The triggers can be easily turned on and off if needed, and can even be reset to the way it initially was. The new scripts don't eternally influence the system and, more notably, don't affect agreements of support with sellers.
The bank can now use one security management system for two card access systems whenever it does its badge imaging and capturing photos for IDs. These systems will ultimately be incorporated so that card management will be handled in Picture Perfect and instantly bring up to date the Verex alarm system which is necessary for the operation of card access and burglary alarm in retail sites.
Exporting to Excel or a PDF file has also been greatly facilitated for Bank officials, thanks to the innovation of the reporting tool. The information is now very easier to find since bank officials can now write reports with drop-down boxes. The provided reports contain data about everything from who has right of entry to certain areas, to system customization data.
The console operators have been permitted to concentrate on and address more critical tasks rather than the manual tasks of pulling reports, this have been made possible after automating the regular reports process. Adding on, the city bank usually handles close to 200 automated reports at a variety of intervals, from quarterly to weekly or monthly. The reports are received as Excel files by the recipients. Along with saving time for the security operators, automated reporting guarantees that the reports are never overlooked and go out on schedule. This enables the bank of upholding a high standard of audit conformity.
surveillance officials also have created scripts that make sure that contractor badges are disabled after a specific period of inactivity and that no employee has duplicate badges.
The human resources department of this city bank shares some non-sensitive employee information (such as department, name and phone numbers) so that personnel modifications are immediately and automatically transferred to the security system and terminations automatically disable the badge of a retired employee.

Fire capabilities for the property
The officials of this city bank can also use fire alarm panels and fire alarm software in combination with Picture Perfect at many of its vicinities. The bank’s security officials can quickly look at alarm conditions and find precise locations and produce a history report using GE's Fireworks software application. This system also provides global dispatch and disposition. For instance, the fire department can be provided with a precise illustration of where the alarm is located. The software application can easily read and pick up data from the EST3 fire alarm console.
The end user can go to any EST strategic partner which makes the entire system non-proprietary which is exactly what it was designed to be. If for any reason the user doesn't like the service or has any other problem with it, he or she can simply go to another strategic associate.
With the extended warranty and the sensitivity of the smoke alarm heads a return on investment has already been noticed. By not having to manually test smoke alarm heads, companies can recover the cost of the system.
This next incident will prove the powerfulness of this security system. On a rare incident the motor on an HVAC air conditioning unit shorted out. The alarm spotted it instantly and pinpointed its precise position. Within only 10 minutes the bank was quickly able to determine that the incident did not pose any threat to the building or the workers. If you ponder on this incident for a while, you will soon realize that this bank just saved a significant amount of money by not having to empty out an entire office tower. Other unprotected banks would have immediate called all individuals to stop doing their jobs and immediately leave the building when in actuality the incident did not require this type of security procedure.

Realizing what it Really is
Beyond a shadow of a doubt, physical access control systems on an enterprise level and business standards are currently expressed as much in IT language as they are in access control language, and that is a fact that nobody can argue against. The openness and vast integration abilities of these conjoined physical security systems lets security officials incorporate security solutions with other business application system solutions, such as resource planning for the enterprise and individual personnel. Which is essentially what technology convergence is all about.
If we look closely at various technology enterprises in today’s time and age we will notice that this trend of integration, incorporation, and convergence is becoming very popular, regardless if it is in the security industry or other technology companies. The way that this phenomenon happens is easily explained if we look a few decades ago in to the history of these companies when they operated individually and were not associated with any partners or other mutual companies. And let us take the CCTV and IP technology as an example.
The CCTV industry operated individually for a long period of time, providing security cameras and other surveillance equipment for concerned citizens and businesses. Suddenly the internet was discovered and it began to rapidly spread into every major industry. From music, to shopping, to business, it did not matter, the internet was there.