A vested interest in FleetBoston Financial

Sep 1, 2001 12:00 PM, By KATE HENRY

Michael Franke joined FleetBoston Financial's Albany, N.Y., office six mergers and acquisitions and 11 years ago as a member of its guard staff, fresh out of the Air Force where he held the rank of sergeant and was a security specialist.

Today, FleetBoston is the seventh-largest financial services company in the U.S., with about $200 billion in assets, 22 million customers in 20 countries and territories and roughly 1,700 retail branches and 3,800 ATM machines. Franke still calls home the Albany, N.Y. offices, which house the company's corporate data center. But as a security project manager, his purview now includes security project management in three regions of New York state and consulting with affiliate groups in other parts of the country as needed.

As his responsibilities have evolved, an open-door policy and commitment to protecting the company's assets have consistently distinguished Franke's work.

TACKLING THE DAY-TO-DAY

“You can outsource certain functions, but everything has to come back to someone on site — I'm glad to be that person, because I have a vested interest in the building,” Franke says. “I think my experience — evolving from being in one spot doing one thing, to doing many things in many locations — is probably pretty typical for many people in the industry,” he notes.

Franke brings to his work the belief that everyone contributes a unique, diverse perspective. “You have to listen and get all the facts before you move forward and also remember that everyone seems to work a gazillion hours these days, while balancing the demands of work and those outside work,” he says.

Craig Baker, a contract security supervisor for Fleet Boston, appreciates Franke's qualities and notes Franke's accomplishments were numerous in 2001: He successfully converted the Albany guard force from corporate to contract, directed a major security installation at the corporate data center and organized a time-sensitive conversion project at the telecommunications center — all while ensuring smooth operation of physical security at Fleet's retail branches in his regions.

And most notably, Baker says, Franke “always has time not only to plan and carry out the projects that will increase Fleet's security, but also to stop and encourage each security officer, see how they're doing and ask if there are any questions or concerns he can help with.”

Franke understands what it takes to succeed in a new role. One of the earliest challenges he faced in his current position came within three months of assuming it. “I grew up within Fleet in the security operations environment, but upon becoming a project manager, I was asked to completely design security for a brand-new retail branch bank, from concrete slab up,” he recalls. “I knew nil about safes, vaults, night depositories and the like, and this was a new, sophisticated branch, with Internet access and other Web-based options for customers, for example.” He says the on-the-job training and support and assistance of his peers was invaluable.

Today, such projects often keep Franke busy, whether for new buildings or renovations, and with 90 branches in his area, there's always something to do. He recommends and specifies security equipment, gathers proposals and bids, supervises the installation of equipment and provides input into the annual budget process for security enhancements. “It's an ongoing process that involves a lot of reviews and surveys as far as risk assessment,” he says.

SECURING THE BRAIN OF FLEETBOSTON

Franke acknowledges that the security installation for the multi-million-dollar data center project was a big one because “the data center is an eggs-all-in-one-basket type of building. If a teller in Maine is working at her workstation, that information is funneling through Albany,” he explains.

The 18-month project involved engineers, architects, security vendors and numerous contractors dedicated to upgrading the building's infrastructure, and “with all that priority and criticality, security was a big player,” Franke notes. The security team completed much of its work within six months and kept up with its schedule and within or under its budget throughout the project.

All phases of the project took place while the data center was in constant active operation. “There is no downtime in this environment,” Franke points out. “People walk up to an ATM and they want their money. The biggest security challenge was to maintain tight controls over the influx of non-bank people working in the middle of the data center, while still enabling the company to press on,” he says. “We had instances where they'd be, say, adding a generator and there would literally be a big hole in the side of the building.”

Franke says there was a good security base to build on, but the opportunity for upgrades became apparent. “We migrated our card access from mag stripe to proximity and updated the entire alarm program from the perimeter in.” He notes that the project also included a complete refitting of the CCTV program, such as adding color cameras, some pan-tilt-zoom, and matrix switchers, which route to a bank of time-lapse VCRs residing in a new on-site security station. “The ability to better view activity at critical areas makes a huge difference,” he says.

Franke adds that Fleet has a separate and large audit and internal information security group with which he interfaces on projects to ensure that physical security measures meet their needs. “They handle authorization into secure areas and other sensitive matters and are a very important group in this [banking] environment,” he says.

Another major project Franke undertook in 2001 was coordinating security for the move of one of the company's regional telecommunications hubs from the basement to the 17th floor of a high-rise building — over a three-day weekend. “It involved moving data, voice circuits and all the technology that supported that building, others in New York and some as far away as California, so again, to accomplish that took considerable logistics, and security was a big player because we needed to secure the move and appropriately protect the new space,” he explains.

More than 50 employees, including his team, worked around the clock and pulled the project off with no downtime, Franke says.

There, too, a subproject emerged: Franke upgraded the building's video systems, built a guard station console and added intercom systems and entry systems for after-hours building access. “We had experienced some minor theft — laptops and the like — but felt we could combat it with video, and knock on wood, since then, we haven't lost a one,” Franke says.

KEEPING PACE WITH THE INDUSTRY

“What many of us in the security industry face every day is the never-ending evolution of security equipment and resources,” Franke says. “Every time you pick up a security publication — though it's hard to have that reading time available — there's a new piece of equipment that has more capabilities. It's very interesting yet cumbersome as an enduser to sort through it all.”

He says, for example, that five years ago, no one even talked realistically about using digital recorders or biometrics. “Now, it's ‘which of the 150 of them do we pick?’ The company and the job challenge you to make the right selections because there is no time to experiment. It's fast-paced and ever-changing,” he says.

Franke sees the continuing effort to further professionalize the security field as a broader challenge. “A lot of issues have brought security to the forefront,” he says. “In New York, for example, when they began guard licensing and mandatory minimum training for security, that was a step in the right direction, but there's much more to be done to bring security on an even playing field with other lines of business.”

Franke holds an associate degree in criminal justice and upon graduation was honored for having earned the highest grade-point average in his graduating class. A member of ASIS with “too many crime prevention and physical security seminars to count” under his belt, he is also a big sports fan and a devoted parent. “My children are active in their schools and in sports, so I try to support them as much as possible,” he says — and he tries to squeeze in a little time on the golf course as well.

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© 2012 Penton Media Inc.

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