How One Company Streamlined Its Physical Security by Shifting to the Cloud
A business-to-business automotive parts company turned to CDW to help it upgrade its existing physical security and video surveillance systems by moving from an on-premises solution to a cloud-based platform.
An automotive parts company that supplies to car dealerships was not satisfied with the quality of its existing video surveillance and physical security systems.
The company had been using an on-premises solution, meaning that at every one of its locations there was a different set of servers and cameras, and routine maintenance was a time-consuming affair. The same was true for its physical security access control systems, where a patchwork of vendors and on-premises hardware made maintenance difficult.
The business had grown by acquisition, according to Regis Dean, a CDW field account executive that worked directly with the company. “As they expand their footprint, they have brought on organizations that use disparate solutions to address video surveillance and physical security,” Dean says. “This created a hodgepodge of equipment and solutions.”
The company turned to CDW to help streamline both its video surveillance and physical access control systems by moving to cloud-based platforms. By upgrading, it has gained a more future-proofed physical security system that has greater capabilities, is easier to manage and delivers enhanced security for its stores.
“The ability to look up who swiped their badge, at what door, and then automatically identify that individual within the same interface, without having to juggle different products, that shortens the investigation time dramatically.”
— Jeremy Walker, Principal Field Solution Architect for Physical Security Solutions, CDW
A New Access Control Platform Simplifies Employee Validation
Similar to its video surveillance approach, the auto parts company had multiple on-premises solutions for access control to validate employees as they entered and left certain areas. Walker says he recommended solutions from Genea, a cloud-based access control firm.
CDW conducted another assessment to determine which doors would need to have access control technology added and how the access control solution would be connected to the wider security system, Walker says.
That work coincided with the assessment for the upgrade to the Meraki cameras, requiring less back and forth with the company, Walker says. Notably, the company was operating with a mix of legacy access control hardware and software components it had inherited over time through acquisitions, but CDW helped it reuse as much existing equipment as possible to save costs. For example, merging the Genea solution with the Meraki video surveillance cameras made it easier for the company to conduct security investigations to determine who badged into an area at a specific time.
There are many drawbacks to having a piecemeal on-premises solution for physical security, Walker says. Users must use different badges to access different parts of a facility and, with camera surveillance, they have to log in to and out of different video management tools.
The cumbersome nature of the setup also makes it difficult to conduct security investigations.
For example, if a security manager were looking at the playback of a video camera and saw an unknown person entering a building at a certain date and time, the manager would have to log in to a separate access control system to see if the date and time on the log matched what was captured on the camera. “Merging the Genea and Meraki systems eliminates that,” Walker explains.
Walker uses the example of an employee presenting their badge at a badge reader at a door. The moment they swipe their badge, the camera can tag that event. “The ability to look up who swiped their badge, at what door, and then automatically identify that individual within the same interface, without having to juggle different products, that shortens the investigation time dramatically,” he says.
If someone uses a stolen badge, the camera system can identify that individual. And “because the camera is tied into the access control system, you won’t have to toggle between two different systems.”
For the auto parts company, badges are not necessary with the new system. Instead of giving employees physical badges, Walker says, the company issues access control credentials digitally to employees’ smartphones.
“They can basically walk up to a door, flash their phone, unlock the door and walk in,” he says.
Cloud-Based Tools Make Acquiring and Integrating Companies Easier
The auto parts company’s upgrades to its physical security were led by its CIO, Walker says, and increasingly, IT teams are being tasked with managing companies’ physical security solutions. That can be a challenge for departments that are already stretched thin, which makes cloud-based physical security solutions even more attractive because they are easier to maintain, Walker says.
“That is where we’re seeing a big push to the cloud, where they’re basically adding a camera on the network and not having to deal with any of the servers, any on-prem hardware or firmware, and the maintenance of it is done remotely,” he says. “They don’t have to worry about any of that.”
With the migration, the company now has dashboard access to a large portion of the endpoints on its network, Dean says. Using one cloud saves the company the time and effort needed to manage its widely dispersed and technologically varied systems, he says. “The vice president of risk management can access systems all over the country with a single login,” he says. “All incidents can be managed from one dashboard, and upgrades can be made all at once.”
The auto parts company has made several acquisitions in recent years to expand its distribution centers and other areas. When another acquisition happens, the company will need to integrate the new location into its physical security infrastructure. But with the cloud solution, that simply means installing connected cameras at the new facility and adding them to the network, Walker says. “And then they’ve got eyes on it. They don’t have to worry about anything else. They just add it to the dashboard and they’re done. So, it kind of leverages that ease of deployment.”