The Progressive Montréal Police Force Advances Security with Software House

The Montréal Police force is innovative in both its approach to enforcing the law and advancing its own security. Instead of the typical policing method of operating a few precincts with a large number of officers at each location, this police agency enforces the law in a more distributed manner. With more than 80 sites throughout the city including 49 community stations, officers work at multiple sites throughout a given week. As activities in the city change, more officers may be needed within certain neighborhood sites and less at others. This approach to policing efforts allows the force to assign officers where they are needed most.

While being near all citizens is a clear advantage for both the efficiency of the police force and the protection of Montréal citizens, the security challenges of managing officer access to these sites were considerable – until the force upgraded its system to the C•CURE 800 access control system from Software House, a leading access control brand of Tyco International’s Fire and Security division.

“With the new system, we are able to distribute the access control by building more easily and manage corporate access with only a few security personnel.” said Rhéal Masse, information system security manager, Montréal Police “With the C•CURE 800, the isolated approach to security became distributed. The C?CURE has enhanced security, takes less time and provides superior features.”

The Need

Prior to implementing the C•CURE 800, the Montréal Police used over 40 different databases to control access at each site. The maintenance of these databases was timely, costly, and took 60 people to manage.

Each police site operated independently, making granting and provisioning access to the more than 6,000 card holders an immense challenge. Until the upgrade, e-mail communication between security officers was the only method of granting security to various sites. Even more challenging, once access was granted, it was difficult to remove a card holder’s right to access a facility due to the decentralized system. The disorderliness of the security provisioning process was confusing and problematic.

Because of the multiple databases and decentralized security, a lost card became a security crisis, resulting in security personnel scrambling about the many sites to manually delete access from each system. During the time a card was lost, the police force was at risk for a security breach and security personnel were forced to rushed about numberous sites to delete access rights of the lost card.

Because of this situation, as well as many other indicators, the Montréal Police saw the need to upgrade its security to a more sophisticated system that could match its advanced approach to law enforcement. The police force’s top priority was the ability to grant and delete access privileges quickly and easily through a centralized database.

The Answer

The Montréal police force turned to Altel, Inc., a security systems integrator based in Laval, Quebec, to help in its security systems upgrade. After examining the police force’s unique need to manage multiple sites while granting privileges and provisioning security to facilities quickly and easily to individuals and groups, Altel recommended using the C?CURE 800/8000 from Software House.

“When dealing with customers who have multiple sites and many users, all with various levels of access, securing sites can be a difficult task,” said Bruno Deroschers, technical director, Altel, Inc. “When approaching this complicated mission, Altel has used the C•CURE 800 often and it has proven to be an essential product for securing these facilities.”

The C•CURE system allowed the more than 40 databases to combine into one centralized database, easing the security process. With the new system, security staff can grant access to one site while providing the ability to easily and immediately remove that access once the officer’s work at the site is complete.

“Within any week, an officer might be assigned to a different site each day. With the Software House product, we can update an officer’s access to each location easily with one centralized database holding all the needed information and partitioning the systems to easily grant and withdraw access,” Masse, said.

Beyond Access Control

In addition to adding value through this centralized approach to provisioning access control, the C•CURE 800 helps advance police business processes. One of the features that helps advance these business processes is the paging feature. This feature gives notification to the appropriate manager of any event that needs to be addressed.

For example, if there were a problem with temperature rising or lowering at the transmission site which holds a large tank of gas, the site’s HVAC system technician would be automatically paged to resolve the problem. If there is an IT problem, the IT manager on duty is paged. The C•CURE system allows a quicker and more managed approach to business processes within the Montréal Police sites.

“Altel has recommended the C•CURE 800/8000 at several sites, including four police agencies in Quebec all of which are using the system with success,” said Deroschers. “The system is a reliable and user-friendly product which is simple to install, program and update.”

Plans for the Future

As the Montréal Police continue to be leaders in innovation for both process and security, they have continued to look to new ways to upgrade their security. The next step for this process is a plan of action for security crises. Montréal Police are now exploring a plan to pilot the C•CURE ID and C•CURE 800 together with biometric technologies to create a mobile workstation where people are validated and granted access to more open areas in an accurate and simplified manner.

When granting access to a crisis site, validating personnel can be difficult. By creating this mobile workstation where granting access has been planned and tested, the process can evolve more smoothly.

“The C•CURE 800 has proven to be a vital product for advancing our security and processes,” Masse said. “We look forward to extending our use of the Software House products to continue to advance security.”