Denver RTD takes top Platinum award at Secured Cities for project innovation
The Secured Cities conference, in conjunction with Security Technology Executive (STE) magazine, recognized some of the most unique and collaborative security projects in North America this past week in Houston as the Security Innovation Awards (SIA) reception was held at the Reliant Crowne Plaza Hotel.
Six top security projects were honored at the 10th annual awards ceremony – five Gold winners and the Grand Platinum for the top overall project. Each submission reflected key public/private partnership sectors that define the Secured Cities conference and the audience of STE magazine. Noting that this year’s submissions were among the most competitive, judges selected winners from the municipal, government, corporate, campus, transit, and private sectors. In addition to the five individual vertical market awards, the judges bestowed accolades to the best overall project with the Grand Platinum award, which went to the Denver Regional Transportation District (RTD) for its comprehensive transit security project that covers more than 2,300 square miles and eight counties.
Qognify, the Denver RTD, and its partners captured the top award for devising one of the country’s most advanced and comprehensive enterprise-level security programs. Taking a phased approach that kept passenger safety and satisfaction at the heart of planning, the Denver RTD has been methodically and continually improving their transit system for more than a decade.
“Securing every train to the plane,” an objective for the latest phase of this innovative project, includes a first-of-its-kind fixed wayside VMS integrated with an on-board mobile video surveillance solution, powered by Qognify’s advanced video management. At the core of this solution and the entire security operation is Situator, Qognify’s advanced Situational Management/PSIM platform.
“We’ve successfully leveraged and extended advanced video management to our entire transportation fleet using mobile capabilities, and then adding Situation Management to it,” commented Bob Grado, Transit Police Commander and Manager of Integrated Security Operations, Denver Regional Transportation District. “The journey we’ve taken with Qognify has significantly improved the security and operations at Denver RTD. We’re proud that the industry’s most prestigious award is recognizing this program.”
“The Denver RTD Security Program exemplifies the use of smart technology by smart people. Their objective was to extend the benefits of a combined situation management and video management solution for their entire transportation fleet for the benefit of passengers, employees, and the public at large," added Moti Shabtai, President of Qognify. "And collectively we were able to achieve just that. We are honored to be recognized by the prestigious STE award for the second year in a row, this time for our close partnership with the Denver RTD, Panasonic, Axis, and Rail Services Corporation.”
The Security Innovation Awards, sponsored by the SouthComm Security Media Group and hosted by Secured Cities, are open to all vendors, integrators, consultants and end-users. This coveted honor recognizes the most impressive collaborative project highlighting the lead vendors, the integrator (or consultant/engineer) and the end-user client.
The top five Gold winning sector project winners included:
Campus Security Sector Project: Littleton, Colorado Public Schools – Submitted by 3xLogic
In December 2013, Littleton Public Schools (LPS), in Colorado suffered a fatal shooting at their Arapahoe High School. The shooting caused school officials to expedite their technology update and expansion plans. Today they continue to roll out new cameras, hybrid NVRs, access control, intrusion, and a host of other systems, as they move toward their ambitious goal of creating a district-wide, comprehensive Physical Security Information Management (PSIM) system.
Upon completion, the new PSIM system will oversee and coordinate security for approximately 15,000 students and staff at LPS’ 27 school and administrative buildings, spread out over 29 miles.
Guy Grace, LPS Director of Security and Emergency Planning, said that a full-fledged PSIM system is the end goal, adding that they can bring a variety of systems that are non-proprietary—access control, VMS, fire detection, perimeter, mass notification, barrier protection/detection, and diagnostic systems—all together into one unified system.”
“A PSIM allows us the flexibility to grow and expand, if needed we can have four operators at any one time in our control room. We have the flexibility to bring in people to deal with what is happening, what is needed. My staff needs to liaise with 145 users across our entire district. We have to manage this system as efficiently as possible, so we train our people to wear multiple hats. It seems to be working; we have not had any staff turnover since 2010.”
A total of 145 people has access to the video footage and eventually all data coming from the PSIM. At present, LPS is issuing various users with tablets with Android software to enable mobility and faster, more accurate responses. LPS is providing designated security and police vehicles with video feeds as well.
“Our primary challenge was providing the school district with a system that could expand and evolve over the next 20-30 years,” said Grace.
Other major vendor partners in the LPS project included Open Options, Aiphone, and Altronix for access control, while Bosch, Inovonics, and Optex handled intrusion detection.
For its vision of designing a comprehensive, integrated security system that organically evolves to minimize obsolescence and grow capabilities over time, along with its ability to create a multi-faceted security system that enables 27-school districts to improve overall situational awareness, while taking proactive, layered approach to mission of student/staff safety, 3xLogic and its integrator and vendor partners were awarded this Gold standard of excellence.
Municipal Video Surveillance Sector Project: The City of Denver – Submitted by Axis Communications
Denver is home to world-class public parks popular with residents and tourists. The city needed a better way to monitor activity in the parks, as well as public squares and parking lots, and assure citizens that it was safe to enjoy them.
When Phil Hurbace joined the city of Denver’s Converged Infrastructure/Video Team in 2008, the city’s surveillance system consisted of a hodgepodge of fewer than 100 cameras and recorders from different brands, with each agency and office acting independently of each other. Every building had its own unique analog, standalone system. There were no standards; there was a lack of surveillance coverage across key sites and no system for ongoing maintenance.
The analog cameras offered low resolutions, no ability to see objects or people in darkness. Recording of video was done by DVR or VCR; challenging for public safety personnel to quickly retrieve and review video content.
Hurbace’s team launched a project to upgrade all of the city and surrounding counties of Denver cameras to IP-based cameras. They chose Axis as the primary manufacturer, based on the reputation of Axis products designed around ease of use and reliability.
The city partnered with Stone Security, a leading security integrator with a major presence in Denver, to design the system.
Over the next eight years, the city surveillance system was expanded from 75 cameras to 1,550 cameras, which cover 65 sites among 25 different government agencies. The average annual growth rate in cameras across the city was 35 percent. Cameras now cover nearly all city and county buildings, including police and fire facilities, recreational centers, the Department of Motor Vehicles, the county jail, the city crime lab, family shelters, and public parks, among many other agency facilities.
The modernizing of Denver’s city surveillance system has resulted in increased reliability, enhanced post-incident investigation, more transparency for departments handling cash transactions and improved customer service for agencies like the DMV who use video data to analyze customer wait times. Video data also now resides on network storage and can be rapidly retrieved and reviewed post-incident.
For its efforts to transition from a reactive to a proactive public safety force, the City of Denver and its Converged Infrastructure/Video Team along with Axis Communications, its integrator, and other vendor partners were awarded this Gold standard of excellence.
Public Safety Sector Project: The City of Phoenix – Submitted by Milestone Systems
With a total area of over 14,500 square miles, and with a population of 4.5 million people, the Phoenix Metropolitan Area presents many law enforcement challenges. With heightened security concerns for regular large sporting and music events, Phoenix law enforcement needed a way to tie together cities and cover a large geographic area in the most efficient and reliable way possible. A unified multi-city, multi-agency video security solution best addressed the unique needs of the situation.
The Phoenix Police Department was tasked with creating a security solution for two major national sports events taking place in early February 2015. The solution required coordination with multiple cities and government agencies. These sporting events drew more than half a million people into the Phoenix/Glendale/Scottsdale area. A flexible solution was needed for this combined effort to manage the crowds, minimize incidents and keep attendees safe.
Law enforcement agencies rely on video surveillance systems to provide real-time situational awareness, recorded forensic evidence, and to act as a visual deterrent to crime. Officials need extensive camera coverage and a reliable VMS to ensure that citizens and property are being protected.
Working with a grant from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other funding sources, Jason Tyre, a member of the Phoenix Police Department, Homeland Defense Bureau and Arizona Counter-Terrorism Information Center (ACTIC), headed up a team that devised a comprehensive security solution using Milestone XProtect video management software (VMS) as the operation’s platform, since different versions of the VMS were already deployed at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport, the Glendale Civic Center, and connected to various camera systems in parts of Phoenix, Glendale and Scottsdale.
Tyre and his team based operations at the multi-agency coordination center (MACC), a dedicated command central where his team monitored cameras, sharing information with federal authorities, transit officials, city and county police, fire departments and other security officials. There was a dedicated network fiber path between Phoenix, Glendale, and Scottsdale, which Tyre and Phoenix PD Sergeant Anthony Jones cite as a critical factor in facilitating the flow of information among the cities and agencies.
“Law enforcement wanted to tie together the monitoring of all surrounding areas. The easiest way to do this was through the Milestone Interconnect license,” said David King, Senior Account Manager, Milestone Systems. “With Interconnect, Central Command was able to pull in video from all of the areas including Tempe, Gilbert, Mesa, Scottsdale, Glendale and incorporate it with video from the stadium, airport, and convention center — everything fed back to the command centers and the operators were looking at all the video, all in real time. We're talking something like 2,800 cameras throughout the valley.”
For facilitating a high-end video management solution that coordinated existing cameras from a variety of vendors and location, enabling teams on the ground to see and share video with their phones and tablets to take immediate action on any incident during this truly collaborative effort, this multi-city strategy led by City of Phoenix and Phoenix PD, along with Milestone, its integrator, and other vendor partners were awarded this Gold standard of excellence
Private Sector Security Project: Total System Services (TSYS) – Submitted by Tech Systems
Total System Services (commonly referred to as TSYS) is a United States credit card processor, merchant acquirer, and bank credit card issuer. TSYS provides payment processing, merchant, and related payment services to financial and nonfinancial institutions in the United States, Europe, Canada, Mexico, and internationally.
As a credit card processor, TSYS is held to a strict standard around PCI compliance, undergoing approximately 60 audits per year. And these audits aren’t easy. They are conducted by both their clients (major card issuers) and Federal Examiners. TSYS also supplements the external audits with internal audits. This has become increasingly more critical in the credit processor industry over the past several years as regulations have become more and more stringent.
With its international footprint and with varying security threat levels at each location, TSYS’s biggest challenge is its high secure areas: card production facilities and data centers. They utilize turnstiles/revolvers, anti-tailgating, and anti-passback for a layered approach that makes its security program quite effective. On the video side, TSYS require 90 days of video storage, which is driving its servers into some pretty significant sized hard drives.
The security department’s challenge has been heightened by ongoing new business acquisitions and the migration upgrade of its access control system across the entire organization. Upgrading from a Software House C•CURE 800 to the 9000 system was no easy task, according to Security Director Jay Redden, but he stressed that their ability to convert these new acquisitions as they emerge has certainly helped.
By establishing a clear and concise technology roadmap from the outset, making the business case for technology growth and understanding from the outset what was needed to gain corporate buy-in of project expansion has ensured success.
TSYS’s Global Security Resource Center is the heart of its security program, boasting a 47-member team in its corporate security department, including operations/technology, badging/administration, programmers, and installers. Beyond the GSRC they have forged key partnerships with top integrators like Tech Systems outside of their headquarters and across the globe. Security Director Redden admitted that managing these relationships is so important to the company’s overall security and mitigation success.
For its ongoing attention to security management best practices, a vision for seamless technology expansion and migration, its attention to detail and understanding of corporate culture and cooperation, along with its exemplary working relationship with a trusted systems integration partner, Tech Systems, TSYS, and Software were awarded this Gold standard of excellence.
Collaborative Government Project: Credentialed High Assurance Video Encryption (CHAVE) – Submitted by Bosch Security Systems
Despite the fears of terrorist fighters flowing out of Iraq and Syria, some U.S. senators said a more urgent worry is that the FBI is missing opportunities to head off home-grown terrorist attacks like the shooting at an Orlando nightclub in June where 49 people were killed and the bombings this past summer in New York and New Jersey.
To thwart the impact of these emerging threats, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) desired a solution to improve methods of screening vehicles and explosives detection systems nationwide to mitigate the threats of a lone wolf and self-radicalized individuals that are already within our borders.
Bosch Security Systems, SecureXperts, MSA Security and Genetec collaborated in the integration of MSA SmartTech, into its platform known as the Credentialed High Assurance Video Encryption (CHAVE) cyber secure IP video system.
Using this technology, explosives, and weapons detection is now augmented by remote screener support, which provides DHS, other government agencies, and commercial organizations with a secure method to immediately involve experts that are on duty 24x7x365 to assist with the aid of detection of suspicious packages at the press of a button.
Using SmartTech technology, digital images and/or video that are captured from current screening machines and other technologies can be transmitted securely using Bosch’s CHAVE enabled cameras, which is the only camera portfolio using a secure trusted platform module that achieves FIPS 140-2 level 3 certification to remote location with a true end to end encryption. The Genetec Security Center video management system captures each screening area and records the action of the individuals, screeners, and packages into a single scene view.
Expert explosives detection personnel from MSA provide screeners with real-time immediate support to identify suspicious packages and explosives, providing force multiplication and increased operational effectiveness nationwide.
For their efforts to help mitigate risks at more than 11,000 federal facilities, increase the ability to detect and track lone wolf terrorists, achieve cybersecurity requirements by FISMA, NIST and OMB, along with the ability to provide strong identity proofing and vetting, Bosch, Genetec, SecureXperts and integrating partner MSA Security were recognized with this Gold standard of excellence.
Note: Qognify and the Denver RTD case study will be featured as the cover story in the November/December issue of Security Technology Executive magazine. Other selected Gold winning projects will also be featured in this issue.
