Page 34 - Campus Security & Life Safety, March/April 2022

A Unified Approach to Campus Security
Unified Solutions
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Many physical security solutions aimed at secur- ing corporate, healthcare, and educational cam- puses have been introduced over the years. From video management and access control to automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) and more, they all help keep people and assets safe. But integrating these solutions together doesn’t mean that they’ll operate seamlessly. Some- times, the results can be limiting. This is where a unified physical security platform can be more effective.
Integration: The Challenges with Siloed Systems
For campus security departments that are using an integrated system, it can become complicated when operators have to communicate and move between these systems to complete a task.
If an organization decides to integrate access control with video, the two systems will appear on the same screen, but they are not necessarily communicating both ways. This means that, while an operator can monitor video as people access the facility through doors and gates, many of their other day-to-day tasks—like distrib- uting cards to employees, unlocking doors for visitors, or running reports to see who accessed an area after the fact—still require the operator to switch between systems. These remaining silos distract operators from the task at hand and introduce more overhead and inefficiencies, such as still having to learn two interfaces, longer time to resolve investigations, and general fatigue from working across systems.
Unification: A Different Way of Bringing Multiple Systems Together
Imagine if all of your physical security activities, functions, and data came through one solution. Then you could harness the flow of data across all of your security activities. It would also make it easier and more efficient to secure your campus while also supporting your organization’s operational activities. This is unification.
A unified platform is built from the ground up to consolidate all of the data that you collect, so you can easily and efficiently manage security policies, monitor events, and run investigations all from one single platform. It provides a seamless and unified view of your entire security operation, giving security operators the ability to monitor, track, and proactively address security concerns using actionable and relevant information. Instead of toggling between multiple tabs, screens, or workstations, operators can manage alarms, maps, sched- ules, and privileges from a single central interface so that security efforts are coordinated and centralized for consistent and swift responses.
For example, if a fence sensor is triggered with a traditional system, the operator will only receive the pre-defined corresponding infor- mation, such as a short video feed of the area around the fence. But a unified system goes beyond just co-locating more data: it allows that data to interact in new ways. Video analytics and other sensors con- firm the fence sensor isn’t a false alarm; doors are locked in response to the threat; speakers sound a warning that personnel are on their way to intercept the intruder. Unification expands the operator’s reach so they can better address the situation.
34 campuslifesecurity.com | MARCH/APRIL 2022