Page 77 - Security Today, January/February 2020

large group of students access to a space for an extended period of time or after hours, we’d have to issue a key,” Stone said.
Stone added that the university began to worry about the potential risks that their older system posed to students and staff, including leaving some doors open to unauthorized parties.
“We got into a situation where spaces would be unlocked for extended periods and pose a potential security risk," Stone said. "We needed a system that could help address these challenges.”
To the Test
Missouri S&T tested three different platforms in a pilot program to determine which system would address the challenges identified and help streamline access control across the university.
Staff determined that two of the three solutions were not a match for the university, and RS2 Technologies emerged as the top choice. In fact, the other systems required an additional, prohibitive financial investment to integrate the data systems that the university identified as being a critical part of the solution.
“Having the ability to launch a new access control program, creat- ing business processes and working directly with RS2 to get this done was invaluable to our team,” Stone said.
He added: “RS2 was able to make all of the modifications request- ed without having to funnel through a third party," allowing the uni- versity to save money by not having to go through another provider.
S&T staff wanted to select an access control platform that would allow multiple university leaders to access data.
“We didn’t want to be the only ones with the ability to generate reports, grant and restrict access and perform other day-to-day tasks,” Stone said.
Missouri S&T installed the RS2 Technologies Access It! Universal. NET access management solution, which provides the university with the ability to integrate third-party devices, such as DVRs, NVRs, video surveillance technology, intercom, intrusion detection and visitor management systems.
The system allows the university to grant access to multiple staff, which includes 88 users across the university's campus. This wide- spread access helps the department save time and resources for more high-level issues.
The university also wanted the ability to use its existing wireless and point of entry (POE) access control readers and controllers from ASSA ABLOY. RS2’s system provided a close integration with the readers, as well as panels from open-platform manufacturer Mercury Security.
“The ability to integrate our existing technology gave us flexibility to make adjustments as needed without replacing the entire system across campus, which would be cost-prohibitive,” Stone said.
Additionally, the RS2 system needed to work seamlessly with the university’s surveillance system from Avigilon, which allows opera- tors to associate cameras with specific doors and pull reports on events using a specific date/time.
“Without that piece of the puzzle, we would have to go to a differ- ent software, select the camera and video and the date and time, which would be a manual and work-intensive process,” Stone said.
These mechanisms have saved the university's staff an enormous amount of time that would have usually been spent on video surveil- lance management. Staff members are now more free to spend their shifts on investigating incidents and coordinating a number of responses across university units, Stone said.
“The integration between the systems saves time and resources when there is an incident to look into," Stone said.
All in Place
Missouri S&T installed the RS2 technology that is now used across campus, including 35 academic buildings and major residence halls. “With centralized access control, we can grant and restrict access
over time as we need to, using integrated data systems that allow us to keep track of access across the university from a single platform,” Stone said.
The solution is intertwined with student housing software, the uni- versity’s laboratory safety training database and the campus dispatch center operated by Missouri A&T police.
“It is critical for our police department to be in the loop on inci- dents that arise across campus,” Stone said.
In addition to alerting campus university police to incidents as they happen, the security system also integrates the university's video surveillance program in order to help police coordinate law enforce- ment responses in real time.
“The RS2 system is also tied to the centralized camera monitoring system to provide the police department with real-time situational awareness," Stone said.
Dispatchers in the police department can monitor alarms in the system. They have a graphical map function that allows them to locate areas on campus in real time with video feeds.
In addition, the department has a console installed in its opera- tions center that allows operators to unlock, lock or lock down any door within the system in the event of an emergency.
The system is also integrated with the student database, which includes photos of all cardholders and additional demographic infor- mation for university police in the event of an incident.
“We wanted to ensure that our officers had the tools they needed for effective oversight of facilities on campus to protect visitors, fac- ulty, staff and students,” Stone said, highlighting the foremost focus of the university police department.
Stone added that the RS2 team was willing to comply with addi- tional requests in order to make the system work better for differ- ent applications and software, particularly when it came to event management.
“I reached out to RS2 to integrate the system with our event man- agement software, and the team worked with us to find a way to make this possible," Stone said.
The RS2 team used an integration from Detrios, called DAX, that allows for interoperability between the access control software and the event management platform that saves users from manually inputting entries to control all-important door open and close schedules.
These integrations have allowed Missouri A&T as well as other university partners to enjoy several functionalities that otherwise would not have been possible, according to both the RS2 team and university administrators.
“We’ve been able to have an open dialogue with university lead- ers, which has helped develop new relationships like the one we have with Detrios, as well as nurture the existing partnerships we have in place today,” said Jeff Bransfield, national sales manager of RS2 Technologies.
Bransfield added that because the university was the first to inte- grate Detrios, RS2 had the opportunity to expand its knowledge of how to implement similar programs at other schools.
“Missouri S&T was the first campus to integrate Detrios, and the work done there has opened up a number of other opportunities for us that we didn’t have prior to this project," Bransfield said.
Jeff Bransfield is the national sales manager at RS2 Technologies. JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2020 campuslifesecurity.com 33