Prestigious Protection

Aug 1, 2005 12:00 PM, By Carol Carey

With 34,933 students and 12,112 employees, the University of Maryland at College Park is one of the largest and most prestigious institutions of higher learning in the United States. Located on 1,250 acres along the Baltimore-Washington D.C. corridor, the school was recently ranked as the 18th best national public university by U.S. News and World Report magazine.

Since 1996, the university has used electronic security to monitor the campus. That was the year when CCTV was first installed; in 1998-1999, electronic access control was introduced. Since then, systems have been updated regularly. Today, the university has a sophisticated, state-of-the-art security system that includes nearly 200 cameras and 2,000 access points.

“Our biggest concerns were thefts and crime against property,” says Major Jay Gruber, assistant chief of police and commander of the Technology Services Bureau of the University of Maryland police force. The University Police is part of the Department of Public Safety, which oversees electronic access control for academic and administrative buildings, along with CCTV for the entire campus, including residential buildings.

An university alumnus himself, Gruber displays pride and dedication as he talks about security at the school's flagship campus in College Park, where property theft has been reduced by 50 to 60 percent in the past 18 months. A key to the success, Gruber says, was the replacement of a 40-year-old key lock system with an all-electronic door opening system. The University's Department of Public Safety uses a Lenel OnGuard 2005 access control system and has connected all the exterior doors under its jurisdiction to that system, thus allowing for electronic opening and closing even when the door is not controlled by a reader.

Replacing the key cores

Doors will open and close automatically even without card readers because they have been connected to the Lenel system, Gruber says. “We ran cabling from the panels to the door lock locations, whether there was a card reader there or not,” he says.

Keyways were then replaced with new cores from InstaKey. “With the exception of members of the University Police, none of the employees have access to these new keys,” Gruber says. “Before that, we went for 40 years with the same key cores. By changing the locks and requiring students and employees to use access control, we eliminated all the old keys. Now, when someone leaves the university, we take their card out of the system. Before, if they left and didn't return their key, there wasn't very much we could do.”

Only members of the Department of Public Safety are now supplied with exterior door keys. “Previously, we had a group of employees who unlocked all the exterior doors in the morning and locked them again in the evening,” Gruber says.

Access control system key to success

The Lenel access control system currently has 125 LNL 1000 and LNL 2000 intelligent panels in place in approximately 125 buildings. About 30 Lenel magnetic stripe readers are connected to each panel. Since 1999, when Access Control & Security Systems first reported on the University's security program, the system has been expanded weekly, Gruber says.

“We provide these installations for departments on campus at their request, and work with Lenel to keep the software up-to-date. New buildings on campus are put on the system,” he says.

Currently, the Department of Public Safety oversees 1,700 card readers which control nearly 2,000 monitored access points in academic and administrative buildings. Campus-wide, most of the 41,500 faculty and staff have been issued mag stripe cards; a small portion have a combination proximity and mag stripe card. The Department of Residential Facilities maintains a separate Lenel system for residential dorms and on-campus fraternity and sorority houses.

The Lenel OnGuard 2005 has one main server. Currently, there are about 15 site licenses, allowing 15 people within the Department of Public Safety to access the system from various workstations, explains Mark McGuigan, assistant manager of the Technology Services Bureau. These individuals are located at the Department of Public Safety headquarters and at the Security Operations Center (SOC). The Lenel system is connected to the university's WAN.

Eighteen-gauge copper strand wire is mostly used to connect the card readers to the LNL panels. A Lantronix communications converter allows hard data from the panel to be transmitted across the WAN, to which the Lenel server is connected directly, McGuigan says.

Extensive card access system

The university's Office of Records and Registration provides the cards to the entire campus. The Department of Public Safety maintains the card access system for academic and administrative buildings, while the Department of Residential Facilities maintains a separate Lenel system for residences. While readers used by Department of Public Safety-maintained buildings are mostly Lenel mag stripe, there are a small number of locations that use proximity cards or biometric technology.

“Police stations and satellite facilities use HID proximity readers and HID cards,” Gruber says. “We produce a photo ID card for our university police officers. This is actually a DuoProx card, an HID prox card with a mag stripe. We have close to 40 HID proximity readers, at our police station, and at police offices within three other buildings.

“In a couple of research labs, the football team offices and locker rooms for players and coaches, we use biometric technology,” Gruber continues. “We have incorporated a Bioscrypt Bio 007 fingerprint reader into the Lenel system. This is actually a keypad and requires the individual to put in a valid combination. When he or she does, a recessed reader opens and the person has their finger read. We have four of these at our Gossett Team House football building.”

A Digital Security Controls (DSC) alarm system is used in connection with the Lenel access control system.

Extensive CCTV monitoring

The university's Department of Public Safety occupies space in four buildings — its headquarters, and buildings in which its Security Operations Center, Criminal Investigations and Training units are located. The Security Operations Center occupies an entire floor in which there is a monitoring room and equipment rooms. In the monitoring room, there are a total of 16 monitors, eight of which are large, 61-inch screens and eight of which are Pelco 17-inch monitors. The screens will soon be replaced by more advanced digital light process technology screens, McGuigan says.

All of the monitors are connected to a Pelco 9760 Matrix Switcher, which takes camera signals and makes them available to any monitor. Sixteen Pelco DX8000 DVRs are used for recording the video. Employees access the cameras through their keyboard. There are 24 University employees, called security monitors, assigned to the SOC, which is always open. The employees work on shifts and have access to the Lenel system. When an incident occurs that requires police intervention, the security monitors alert University Police through telephone and radio communications.

The Department of Public Safety first installed 25 cameras in 1996, added another 25 three years later and another 28 in 2001, when the Security Operations Center staff moved into its present building and expanded staffing levels. Presently, the Department of Public Safety monitors more than 190 cameras, with 25 more in the installation process. They are located campus-wide at mainly exterior locations.

“Currently, we use Pelco equipment,” McGuigan says. “The cameras are all pan/tilt/zoom. We have 30 Esprit IOP cameras. Others are Spectra dome cameras. The cameras are initially connected via stranded copper cabling to a centralized location within a building.” From this location, video is transmitted over the university's fiber network and brought to the SOC. An extensive underground university fiber network is connected to every building, McGuigan says.

Crime-fighting and crowd control

CCTV is placed primarily on building exteriors, and is used to monitor open areas such as parking lots and pedestrian malls. It is also used for parking garages and some residence halls. “Many of the residential halls are taller buildings, and we have mounted cameras on them to get better areas of coverage,” McGuigan says.

“The cameras primarily address break-ins at vehicles and theft of vehicles,” he continues. “They're also used to identify people who may be loitering at garages. Our monitors have full access to the Police Department (PD) radios and hear all PD calls. As soon as a crime occurs, we start moving cameras to the area of the crime. We have caught thefts and robberies in progress and destruction of property in progress.

“In addition, because we're recording, we get a lot of requests for reports. We also use the cameras for accessing traffic control for football or basketball game days.”

The university's basketball arena has a capacity of 18,000, while the Byrd Football Stadium has a capacity of 55,000. Cameras have been useful on busy game days, particularly in lots where people are tailgating and there are incidents of over-consumption of alcohol or underage drinking, McGuigan says.

The university is located in Prince George's County, Md., an older suburb about nine miles from Washington D.C. The county has one of the higher suburban crime rates in the D.C. area, McGuigan says, and the campus is an open campus. There is no physical barrier between the community and campus. “It is almost a semi-urban environment,” he says.

The University Police and Prince George's County Police provide the bulk of the police services for the area adjacent to the campus. “The departments work well together,” McGuigan says. For instance, they let each other know when extra coverage may be needed. An example would be celebrations after the larger football or basketball games. “If Maryland beats Duke (in a basketball game), there's going to be a lot of people downtown and on campus waiting to light bonfires and celebrate. In that case, the Maryland State Police would also help out; we might even solicit help from some smaller local police departments,” McGuigan says.

It's clear that the security systems the University has put in place — along with a well-trained staff — are making it possible for the entire campus community to live, learn and play safely at one of the country's most prestigious academic institutions.

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ABOUT THE COMPANIES

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Digital Security Controls	35
HID Corp.	36
InstaKey	37
Lantronix	38
Lenel Systems Intl. Inc.	39
Pelco	40

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