Page 22 - Security Today, May/June 2023

“Living up to its nickname ‘The Friendly Confines,’ Wrigley Field warmly welcomes all to experience a genuine all-American baseball game.” help them become more proactive in their approach to security. Unified system management, visual map navigation, and auto- mated alerts were all features they knew could enhance their teams’ efficiencies. They also needed server infrastructure that would meet the requirements of their newly built Joint Operations Center (JOC). After a lengthy request for proposal (RFP) process, the Chi- cago Cubs decided on GenetecTM Security Center with the Omni- castTM video management system (VMS) and the StreamvaultTM security infrastructure solution. Steve Inman, vice president of Technology for the Chicago Cubs, said a few key factors helped seal their decision: “Genetec is a leader in the physical security industry and delivers a plat- form that’s scalable, feature-rich, and progressive. “To top it off, Security Center is an open platform with hun- dreds of compatible integrations and had API capabilities that no other solution could match. When we chose Genetec Security Center, we were thinking about our objectives 10+ years down the line. That flexibility opens us up to so many other possibilities in the future,” Inman said. ENHANCING OPERATOR EFFICIENCY WITH ONE SECURITY VIEW Today, the Chicago Cubs security team manages high-definition and multi-lens cameras across the entire Wrigley Field campus from their Joint Security Operations Center (JSOC). They also integrated an existing access control system within Security Cen- ter and deployed multiple Genetec Streamvault appliances with built-in failover and redundancy. “The VMS deployment of Security Center VMS has gone smoothly, and nothing has fallen outside of our timeline. Con- sidering how quickly and how much we’ve expanded our security footprint, that’s been impressive,” Inman said. With Security Center and Omnicast up on their monitors, the team now has an all-encompassing picture of the ballpark’s secu- rity. Though they are still in the early days of its deployment, they feel more in control of their environment than ever before. “In the past, our security team would have a bunch of differ- ent platforms up concurrently. They’d have to know how to find information and piece it together quickly,” Lindsay said. “On a busy gameday, when we’re managing many different situations, that is hard work. With Security Center, all that information is coming into one platform, so they see what is happening and fo- cus exclusively on the tasks at hand. We are seeing a higher level of efficiency across our team.” More recently, the Chicago Cubs implemented Plan Manager, the map-based interface. Now, instead of having to remember de- vice names and locations, they can easily find cameras and doors, and even monitor alarms directly from a map of the ballpark. They plan to continue expanding the system by setting up event- to-actions, adding standard operating procedures, and extending system access to field staff using the Genetec Mobile app. “We’re excited to use the many features of the platform, includ- ing the visual and intuitive enhancements it provides for our opera- tors. The integration between video surveillance and access control has been a significant upgrade. Genetec has really expanded our ability to have real-time visibility of our facility,” Lindsay said. SIMPLIFYING VIDEO EXPANSION WITH APPLIANCES Deploying this infrastructure solution was a critical piece of the puzzle for the Cubs organization. Following implementation, the team ramped up processing power and storage capacity beyond compliance mandates in order to anticipate future growth plans. They now have space left for expansions beyond required mini- mum retention requirements. “Streamvault came pre-loaded with Omnicast and pre-config- ured for our installation requirements. So, the amount of time that it took us to get our video system up and running was incred- ibly quick. We haven’t seen that level of deployment efficiency with any of the other tools that we’ve put in place,” Inman said. “From a scalability perspective, we’ve been able to increase our processing and storage capacity in a big way with- out needing to redesign other components on the backend of our infrastructure. It’s been plug-and-play with Streamvault.” Another big benefit is the ability to connect all systems back to the JSOC for centralized management. This allows the team to expand their surveillance efforts to other smaller, remote locations and get real-time visibility on those sites when required. Looking ahead, the team sees an opportunity to leverage the cloud connec- tivity of Streamvault appliances to further expand their operations, while reducing their hardware footprint across their sites. Appliances also come pre-hardened with all cybersecurity features enabled by default. This has given the Chicago Cubs an expedited path to modernizing their security infrastructure while maintaining cyber resilience. “We run everything through the MLB cybersecurity program. As we went through this process, determined what we needed, and found the best solution to meet our requirements, we were heavily focused on ensuring cybersecurity best practices,” Inman said. “Then we had another layer of approval from MLB whose 22 MAY/JUNE 2023 | SECURITY TODAY FACILITY SECURITY