HID Global: City College Coventry installs converged security solution

HID Global: City College Coventry installs converged security solution. Bringing together a vision and the college’s mission of “Responding to Diversity; Raising the Standard; Taking Education Further” was something to be reflected in the development and choice of a suitable logical and physical access control solution.

Satel Naik, Technical Services Manager at City College in Coventry UK, explained that, except for a few door code locks, no access control had previously been used in the college and there was no information technology (IT) security solution in place. Satel’s vision for the future of City College was to bring security technology to the forefront by selecting the best possible solution and creating a truly intelligent building. The college faced many challenges, including staff and students not wearing ID badges, not to mention limited secure parking and no real physical access control.

Some doors were being left open, there was only limited control of IT user accounts and some abuse of photocopying and printing privileges was also happening. Satel Naik explains that it was important for the college that current laborious and manual processes, such as library book inventory and fine payments, could also be automated and simplified in the future and be part of the planned ID solution. For the safety and convenience of students and staff, the college was also keen on reducing cash handling on site by introducing a cashless payment solution for the canteen.

Making the Vision a Reality

A key requirement for Coventry College was the ability to control real estate, personnel and assets through one medium – a multi-application smart card. City College Coventry asked the security consultancy and integration company to help find the best possible and cost-effective solution for today and the future. Looking at the college’s requirements, Jason Hiller, Head of Sales, proposed an integrated and seamless solution that would combine both physical and logical access control.

“City College required a sophisticated and reliable solution that would cater to their needs not only today, but also in the future,” said Hiller. “We recommended a solution based on HID products, as HID is known not only for reliability, but also for quality and innovation, ensuring that City College will always have a solution up-to-date with the latest standards.”

They recommended HID Global’s networked access control solution in conjunction with an HID partner company, Dvtel, for physical access control. To meet the logical access requirements, the College selected HID’s Crescendo solution, a multiapplication smartcard and iclass R10 readers. “Having looked at several logical access solutions that are currently available on the market, Crescendo was the only real option for the college. Crescendo allowed us to use the same card for physical and logical access control. It is compatible with existing MS ILM2007 and Windows Vista and has a straight forward set-up,” said Satel Naik.

As part of the solution, C700 HID Crescendo cards were deployed, which have integrated middleware. Logical access is run on a virtual college server on a VM slice, running an SQL database and Windows 2003 Server software.

Cashless Incentives

“Crescendo cards allow us to have card records initialized centrally through Microsoft Active Directory and use Microsoft’s Identity Lifecycle Manager (ILM) to control the starters/leavers process in one record/account. The enrolment process is quick and easy, and is managed via HR by the Technical team of the college,” said Satel Naik. “City College opted for Crescendo Java C700 cards with 16k/16 iclass 13.56MHz technology, which provides enough memory for current application requirements and has enough space on the card to add future deployments,” said Naik. “Should we require even more memory on our cards one day we can always upgrade to HID’s 32k cards.”

Coventry College also has plans to implement a cashless catering solution, and currently promotes card carrying by offering their staff and students a 10 percent discount on all card purchases. The chosen system is server-based, which means the cash on the card remains in the cardholders account should the card be lost or stolen. This gives students the confidence to use their cards without fear of losing money, while encouraging students and staff to carry their ID cards at all times.

Multitasking

Additionally, the solution enables the storage of personal student information on the smart card, about allergies for example, helping canteen staff to only serve the cardholder with food suitable to their condition. Because the smart cards are customized, the college can help to decrease crime within the premises as stolen cards can no longer be used at the tills and fraud can easily be identified by verifying that the person using the card matches the ID photo. “Finding something that truly works in an environment such as a college is rare, as students do ‘test’ and ‘challenge’ equipment quite thoroughly,” explained Naik.

“We rolled out Crescendo for all 12,000 students by the end of 2008 and are very happy with the results and feedback we have received regarding the new solution. Working with HID Global gave City College the assurance and trust in a solution that would be not only functional and according to current standards, but reliable and flexible enough to move with the college as its needs change and grow. The college is also looking to add even more capability to their ID cards in the future.

Some of the areas they are looking at include secure transactions of pay slips via PDFs on the mail system; the ability to prevent students from using personal laptops in college networks; meeting rooms and lecture room utilization; automation of energy systems – i.e. room automation, PCs, lights and projectors become live when the lecturer logs in; and tracking of library stock.

Contact:

HID Global,
Haverhill, UK
Tel.: +44 1440 714850
www.hidglobal.com