Page 8 - Campus Security & Life Safety, September 2017

PHYSICAL SAFETY
REVAMPING SECURITY
ON CAMPUS
University of Central Florida (UCF) strives to protect one of the country’s largest educational institutions By Joseph Souza
THE UNIVERSITY OF CENTRAL FLORIDA (UCF), A PUBLIC RESEARCH UNIVERSITY IN ORLANDO, FLA., IS ONE OF THE LARGEST UNIVERSITIES IN THE UNITED STATES. WITH MORE THAN 64,000 STUDENTS AND 12,000 FAC- ULTY AND STAFF SPREAD ACROSS 13 COLLEGES, 3 LARGE CAMPUSES AND 10 REGIONAL LOCATIONS, PRO- VIDING PHYSICAL SECURITY CAN BE CHALLENGING. IN AN EFFORT TO ENHANCE SECURITY ACROSS THE 1,415 ACRE MAIN CAMPUS AND ITS REGIONAL CAMPUSES, UCF CREATED THE DEPARTMENT OF SECURITY AND EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT IN DECEMBER 2014, WHICH COMBINED THE EXISTING OFFICE OF EMERGEN- CY MANAGEMENT WITH A NEWLY-FORMED OFFICE OF SECURITY MANAGEMENT. THE NEW DEPARTMENT WAS TASKED WITH ADDRESSING THE PROBLEM OF
DECENTRALIZED SECURITY AND KEY SYSTEMS, AS WELL AS CONTINUING TO ENHANCE OVERALL SECURITY THROUGH UPGRADES TO EXISTING BUILDINGS AND CREATING PHYSICAL SECURITY STANDARDS FOR ALL NEW CAMPUS CONSTRUCTION.
To tackle the problem of decentralized security, the primary focus was to consolidate more than 2,200 cameras which were streaming to 58 recording servers, and to create policies and standards for where and how they are installed, used and maintained. In addition, the office had to address concerns about the proper retention and preventing unauthorized release of nearly 1 petabyte of video being stored at any given time. UCF’s access control was also disparate, with many differ- ent technologies, card formats and a widespread use of physical keys for more than 12,000 doors on the main campus alone. The varying access control technologies and key systems sometimes made it chal-
CS8 WWW.CAMPUSLIFESECURITY.COM | SEPTEMBER 2017
A SPECIAL SECTION TO SECURITY TODAY AND THE JOURNAL
CAMPUS SECURITY & LIFE SAFETY