Page 47 - Security Today, October 2018

A Smart Security Program Enterprise approach combines modern access control technology with top-notch security staff
BNy Kim Rahfaldt
orthwestern Mutual believes in doing what is right, whether it’s for their clients, community or employees. For nearly 160 years, the Fortune 500 company has helped clients plan their financial security with confi- dence and has been a staple in downtown Milwaukee.
Northwestern Mutual’s downtown campus consists of five build- ings, including a new 32-story tower, three-floor Learning Center and commons space totaling more than 2.5 million square feet. More than 3,000 people work at the downtown Milwaukee location. The second campus is located in Franklin, Wis., a Milwaukee suburb and includes two buildings occupying 1.1 million square feet with a work- force of approximately 2,100.
Get with the Program
Northwestern Mutual operated several disparate security systems for access control, alarm management, intercom, video and visitor management. The new building project provided an opportunity to upgrade the security system and overall security program. On the technology side, the company selected AMAG Technology’s Sym- metry Access Control - Enterprise System and Symmetry GUEST visitor management system. On the security personnel side, North- western Mutual chose G4S Secure Solutions Security Officers to post entrances and check in visitors.
“We didn’t want to tear out two access control systems to just get one,” said Northwestern Mutual, Corporate Security, Bret Du- Chateau. “We bundled it as a program to present a Security Access Program to senior leadership. We were able to tackle access control, as well as alarm management and visitor management for the entire enterprise with a very strategic approach.
“We went with the Symmetry-Enterprise system because we want- ed everything to be automated and tie everything together from an enterprise perspective. Everyone is talking the same language,” Du- Chateau said. “Interoperability between the two command centers (in
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Milwaukee and Franklin) is now possible, when it wasn’t before.” Each campus has a Security Operations Center (SOC) that is manned 24 hours a day. Operators use Symmetry to acknowledge and log alarms and buzz people in via the intercom and video integration. Audit reports are quickly printed to show statistics on the day’s activity. “We used to have multiple applications so an alarm would go off and we would dispatch. We’d document it in an Excel spreadsheet,” DuChateau said. “After consolidating into an enterprise platform, we enter almost everything into Symmetry and generate reports that tell us how many doors we opened and how many alarms we acknowledged.”
Interoperability, Automation Equals Efficiency
By moving to Symmetry and automating their processes and docu- mentation, Northwestern Mutual experienced an 86 percent reduc- tion in the number of processes (alarm activity, forced access, timed access, doors propped open, duress calls), producing a time savings of 14 hours per month.
About 180 Vingtor-Stentofon intercoms are located throughout the two campuses in the stairwells and parking structures and at all main entrances. The intercoms are integrated with Symmetry Access Control so when used, the security officer knows where they are lo- cated and with a single click of the mouse, they can unlock a door for their customer. Prior to the integration, the security officer would answer the call and then need to figure out the person’s location.
“It’s a nice seamless integration that saves a lot of time,” DuCha- teau said.
During off hours when it’s quiet, Northwestern Mutual security officers can dynamically roll all operations from one campus to the next, including the intercoms. For example, if a downtown third shift corporate security team member working in their SOC takes a break at 2 a.m., they now have the capability to transfer all intercoms, secu- rity and video to the Franklin SOC. The Franklin corporate security
ACCESS CONTROL
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