Cendant Mortgage ties offices together in New Jersey

Apr 1, 2001 12:00 PM

Almost two years ago, officials at Cendant Mortgage, the nation's sixth largest retail mortgage originator, realized the security systems at their facilities in southern New Jersey were no longer capable of meeting the needs of a growing operation. The access control was provided by an out-of-date system, which along with multiple card reader technologies, made it impossible to easily expand or integrate the security function.

The solution they chose was a new $600,000 access control system with video surveillance and other components that permit expansion and further integration as required.

Cendant Mortgage employs about 5,000 people and occupies 1.5 million square feet of office and warehousing space in three New Jersey cities — Mt. Laurel, Moorestown and Westampton. These facilities house the company's teleservices operations, as well as underwriting, legal and administrative functions.

The group provides both sales of new home loans and service of existing mortgages through a bank of toll-free numbers.

Cendant Mortgage is part of the Cendant Corp., a provider of consumer and business services. With headquarters in New York, Cendant has about 28,000 employees operating in four major divisions in more than 100 countries.

In southern New Jersey, Cendant Mortgage's offices include two three-story buildings located in a campus setting in Mt. Laurel and a three-story office building in Moorestown. Another three-story office building and a single-level classroom facility are located near the Mt. Laurel campus. Recently, a records warehouse, located in Westampton, was added to the security system. About nine miles separate the most distant facilities.

The backbone of the security system is a C•CURE 800 integrated security management system manufactured by Sensormatic Electronics Corp., Boca Raton, Fla. The host is located in a central security station in the main facility in Mt. Laurel. Security guards monitor all system activities 24 hours a day. Four client stations are located in the offices of the facility director and security director, in the guard office and off the main lobby. That latter site also serves as the central badging station using the C•CURE 800 Vision Identification Badging System.

All exterior entrances and selected interior areas, such as data rooms, require a valid access card for entry. Each building has between 12 and 15 entrances. In total, there is a combination of 130 Multi Prox and Pro Prox card readers manufactured by HID Corp., Irvine, Calif.

Employees wear photo ID badges at all times in the office. According to Joseph Canney, Cendant's director of security, his officers may place restrictions on cardholders, blocking access to certain areas by employee group or classification or by the specific needs of an individual.

Visitors to the buildings are issued temporary access badges after registering at a lobby station in each facility. For the most part, the Cendant facilities are not open to the public. The only public entrances are through the main lobbies in each building, and they are open only during normal business hours. The security system locks and unlocks the doors automatically.

The security system also includes 23 apCs advanced processing controllers from Sensormatic. Access control information from the outlying facilities is transmitted through the apCs and onto Cendant's Wide Area Network (WAN) before being received in the central security office in Mt. Laurel. The host computer downloads information into each controller's memory. That way, if the host were to fail, the system would still function to limit access to unauthorized personnel. The only loss would be the recording of events.

Each parking lot has CB V Emergency Call stations from Holland, Mich.-based Code Blue located at strategic locations. These allow an employee to immediately contact the central security office in case of an emergency. The security system responds to any alarm situation noting it on the host computer. Security officials can then bring up a camera showing the site to receive an immediate view of the situation. Each of the six facilities has a guard station manned 24 hours a day. A guard will be dispatched by the main security office to check on any alarms noted by the access control system. About 20 guards are on duty at any one time in the six facilities, Canney said.

The video surveillance system includes a total of 36 Panasonic color dome and fixed cameras. The video, received in the central security station, is processed using seven multiplexers and displayed on seven 13-inch and one 20-inch color monitors from Panasonic Video Imaging Systems, Secaucus, N.J. Images are recorded 24 hours a day onto five Panasonic SVHS VCRs and one digital recorder from Indianapolis-based Integral Technologies. All tapes are stored for 60 days for documentation and review purposes. As with the access control information, the video is transmitted to the central security office via Cendant's WAN with the exception of the two campus facilities in Mt. Laurel. There, the video is sent via fiber cable. The entire security system is backed by an uninterruptible power supply to keep it operating in a power outage.

Security Services & Technology (SST), Norristown, Pa., installed the entire system. The total design and installation took about six months. According to Tom Catagnus, SST's marketing manager, the major challenge in upgrading the access system was maintaining protection of the sites while a change in systems was completed.

“We installed the system and all the readers and tested them,” he says. “Then over one weekend we had to disable the older system building by building and turn it over to the new equipment. We had the entire system switched and running by Monday morning. Cendant didn't want their employees left unprotected for even a day.”

Another challenge SST faced was maintaining the aesthetics of the lobby in the main Mt. Laurel building. The company engineered a new mounting device for the HID readers that placed them into a glass door surround with no visible means of support.

According to Canney, the entire system functions very well. “The system has proven to be reliable and easily expandable,” he says. “We have never had any problems with the system going down. And the reports we can generate are very precise, down to the second. I have no doubt that the system has acted as a deterrent and saved us from any serious problems.”

FOR THE RECORD

ABOUT THE COMPANIES

For information, please circle the appropriate Reader Service number (listed below) on one of the Reader Service cards in the issue or visit infoLINK at www.securitysolutions.com.

Code Blue	50
HID Corp.	51
Integral Technologies	52
Panasonic	53
Sensormatic	54
SST	55

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© 2008 Penton Media Inc.

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