EYE OF THE TIGER

Oct 1, 2002 12:00 PM, By CORRINA STELLITANO

South Carolina's Clemson University, with a student and faculty population of almost 25,000, boasts twice the daily inhabitants as the city that shares its name. It never shuts its gates or closes for the night, so its security forces must be unceasingly vigilant. Contract security officers, resident life officials, the security liaisons who staff each building on campus and 31 sworn campus police officers are tasked with providing security, but they are just part of Clemson's wide security net. Keeping students, faculty and staff safe on the 1,400-acre campus requires cooperation among varied departments — and a healthy respect for technology.

“Students want to be where technology is,” says Bill McGee, associate director of Tiger 1 Card Services, the department that supervises the university's student/faculty identity cards. “For our university to stay competitive, we have to give them technology in their everyday lives.”

WE NEVER CLOSE

As a public land grant institution, Clemson is open daily to those traveling through the campus, as well as those who have distinct purpose for being there. Special events also draw additional visitors, especially when more than 100,000 football fans flock to the campus during game weekends each fall.

Says Thea McCrary, deputy chief of the Clemson University Police Department: “The largest challenge is that our campus is open. We're not a gated community. We have to be prepared to address different types of people all the time.”

To serve and protect its constituents, while preserving a sense of hospitality, the 113-year-old university turns to technology with an eye on the future. Over the last five years, steady upgrades have turned a pilot card access program into a cohesive system, made only better with recent Linux upgrades, university officials say.

GETTING CARDED

In early 1995, Clemson began testing a card access system in five residence halls. Although the initial system proved to be overwhelmed by the high demands of a university, Clemson decided to extend card access to all 21 of its residence halls in 1997.

This time, university officials created a seven-person “dream team,” recalls Stan Smith, Clemson's card access administrator and a key player in the project. “We envisioned the system going campus-wide, so we wanted to make sure we addressed future issues, not just housing issues,” he says. “It was really interesting because all seven people chose the same system for the same reasons.”

The chosen product, Picture Perfect, made by Boca Raton, Fla.-based Casi, satisfied concerns about cost, versatility and the need for a system adaptable to a growing university. SFI Electronics, Charlotte, N.C., was selected as an installer. SFI has previously worked with Wofford College, Bob Jones University, Wake Forest and Presbyterian College.

“SFI had a reputation for being very aggressive and for the customer,” Smith says. “We actually awarded the contract in July of '97 and by the third week of August, they had the system in place and operational.”

Currently, the upgraded Linux-based Picture Perfect system receives information from 32 Casi network micros, served by more than 200 readers on doors in residence halls, laboratories and academic buildings. Nine academic areas were included in the system over the past two years. Doors for entrants with special needs are monitored by Casi readers. Other doors use HID ProxPro readers with keypads and ProxPro II readers. Campus doors are protected by VonDuprin crashbars and delayed exit Chexit device locks and VonDuprin Strike Force electric strikes.

Students staff residence hall lobbies during daytime hours, monitoring the readers, alarms and traffic in some residence halls. The readers with keypads on residence hall doors allow residents to enter a PIN at certain times, such as the beginning of the school year. Exterior doors and select laboratories are monitored by 25 Integral digital video cameras, with four-, nine- and 16-channel networked digital video recorders.

Besides increasing security, card access offered additional cost-cutting benefits. “The university used to pay someone to lock and unlock doors manually,” Smith explains. “That's very time-consuming and costly. Using our system, we can program the doors to open and close at designated times.”

“I have one department that has more than 100 keys. If one person lost a key, they'd have to reissue 100 new keys and change all the locks,” Smith continues. “In card access, if you lose your badge, it doesn't compromise the security of anyone else.”

Clemson is currently developing software so that, in the case of a lost or stolen identity badge, students and staff can suspend the badge via the Internet. Being able to quickly suspend an ID badge is essential because Clemson's proximity badges are not just for access control.

ONE-STOP-SHOPPING: TIGER 1

As the official ID of the university, Tiger 1 cards were created to fulfill the one-card philosophy. A proximity stripe allows students access to residences and academic areas; the bar code allows students to check out books in the campus library. Tiger 1's magnetic stripe controls meal plans used in the dining halls and governs athletic privileges, ensuring students only pick up their allotted amount of the coveted tickets.

The magnetic stripe, called the Tiger Stripe, controls students' declining balance accounts which they can use to pay for anything from a round of golf to a load of laundry. The card works in soda machines, restaurants, and canteens anywhere on campus, and Clemson is considering making the cards usable with local merchants.

Even professors know the value of the Tiger 1 card. By requesting a reader, they can monitor attendance in unsupervised labs. A software program delivers a report to the professor noting who attended and what time they arrived.

FROM UNIXWARE TO LINUX

The newest change to the university's access control system was prompted by Casi, now owned by GE Interlogix. Formerly, Clemson's Picture Perfect system was used on a five-year-old computer with an SCO UnixWare-based operating system. In May, Casi used Clemson as a beta site for its new Picture Perfect 1.7, which operates on Red Hat Linux Version 7.2, and the university concurrently upgraded to a new Dell 2500 server. The upgraded Picture Perfect version also incorporates a new version of the underlying database, Informix Dynamic Server 2000.

The results were refreshing, say both Casi and Clemson officials. “When we do a beta site, we look for customers that are going to stress the system, so that we can make sure we find any potential issues,” says Zev Freidus, product manager, Picture Perfect. “The nice thing about Clemson is that they have a fairly large number of badgeholders — now close to 40,000. More badgeholders typically means more people swiping their badge at any given second. We found that when we upgraded them to a Linux system, their performance increased drastically.”

On the SCO UnixWare version of Picture Perfect, the system was able to sustain 50 badges per second. When the upgrade to the Red Hat Linux version was complete, the system's capacity soared to 168 badge transactions.

Clemson's information technology staff was also impressed by the improved security of the upgraded system. Phil Brooks, the administrator who is responsible for the security of campus servers, explains: “The old Unix system was from an era when everything was shared and there was no real security other than a user's ID and a password. Linux was created in an age that was more security-conscious, and it offered the ability to add security that wasn't there in the old system. That was one of the biggest improvements we've realized.”

PARTING WITH TRADITION

The many functions offered by the Tiger 1 card and the corresponding access control system require supervision by a technology-savvy staff, and who better to fill that role than the university's Information Technology department?

At Clemson, the Student Affairs Information Technology Services Department supervises Web development, client support, card access, the Tiger 1 card and server administration. This arrangement is integral to success, Smith says. “With (access control) being in the IT office, it gives us a tremendous advantage in developing programs and always being on the cutting edge,” he explains.

Being on the cutting edge means adapting quickly to change — demonstrated by the university's willingness to automate data entry in its card access system.

“Initially I was the only system administrator,” says Smith. “You can imagine all the [data entry] necessary when they increased it to 21 buildings. I needed help immediately. Rather than hiring, we chose to take a little more aggressive and futuristic approach in terms of looking into automation.”

Chris Foreman, senior systems programmer in the ITS department, helped to create the automation system. Several times each day, updates from the two main university databases — the student database and the human resources/employee database — are transmitted to the Casi card access database. “For any given student, based on the university's database, we know where they live, what classes they are enrolled in, whether they are an undergraduate or graduate student,” says Foreman. “From all of this profile information, we can program what doors they can have access to.”

The Student Affairs Information Technology department continues to be proactive. Last year, they addressed the concern that so much information stored on one card invites misuse. To better protect the privacy of their card carriers, Clemson has disowned what has been the hallmark of student identification on college campuses: the social security number. Today's Tiger 1 cards feature a photograph, a name, and a randomly selected number, but neither card nor the card access database include a social security number.

SECURING SAFETY

With an appreciation for innovative technology, Clemson officials hope their Tiger 1 card and the access control system will continue to prevent and solve crimes.

“It makes a big difference,” says Deputy Chief McCrary. “Tiger 1 is the greatest thing to ever happen to Clemson. Students don't have to carry money, therefore backpacks are not as attractive.”

In addition to being a deterrent, the access control database often contains valuable information to aid in crime solving. “One of the benefits that we've been able to offer is that if we know when an incident happened, we [can] go back to our database and tell what students, faculty or staff were in the area,” Smith says. “Then, the police can talk to those people and piece together the events.”

The ability to use technology in real-time daily applications makes Clemson a proactive, safer place to live and work, McCrary adds.

“I did law enforcement in a large town before, and while card access would be available to individual businesses, I don't think it was ever tied together as directly as it is [here],” McCrary says. “Technology is great, and I think the way that Clemson looks at it, and the way this division addresses it, has made our campus one of the safest in the nation.”

FOR THE RECORD

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Corrina Stellitano is a Fairhope, Ala.-based writer and regular contributor to Access Control & Security Systems.

ABOUT THE COMPANIES

For information, please circle the Reader Service Number (listed below) on one of the Reader Service Cards in the issue or visit www.securitysolutions.com.

Casi/GE Interlogix	11
HID Corp.	12
Integral Technologies	13
SFI Electronics	14
VonDuprin	15

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