As part of a system-wide upgrade, the eight residential campuses under Penn State University’s Commonwealth Campus Housing and Food Services are moving to a single security and event management platform. The university has partnered with Tyco Security Products on the project, which will support video and access control systems, a new system of wireless locks and upgraded cameras for residence halls and other campus facilities.

Prior to the new single system structure, Penn State’s campuses were operating on multiple platforms for academic and physical security systems. The university decided to leverage Tyco Security Products’ Software House C•CURE 9000 software as the standard security management platform across its disparate campuses.

Along with the decision to implement C•CURE as the access control system, the university also opted to upgrade its wireless locking system. The university landed on the Stanley Wi-Q wireless locks to be integrated with the C•CURE 9000 platform. The Penn State system is converting more than 720 locks across a dozen residence halls that house more than 1,200 students at five campuses.

Moving to wireless locks is expected to improve the university’s programming and monitoring, while providing easier operational use. The wireless locks are mounted on each residence room door, communicate with a Stanley Wi-Q portal gateway — of which there are roughly 90 across the system — which in turn communicate with the C•CURE software.

University officials believe that the move to a wireless lock solution will help to alleviate the ever-present lost key problem, as well as make it easier for the appropriate students to gain access. The university will leverage a one card formula, using the same card for accessing wireless room locks as are used for other existing hard-wired doors, card readers at printers and copiers, laundry machines and POS registers.

With C•CURE 9000, university security personnel can see audit data, determine when a door was offline through the system’s journal feature and if information regarding door status has changed. To aid in this aspect of the project, 110 iSTAR door controller panels have been installed to monitor door data throughout the campuses, including Penn State’s flagship campus, University Park.

User data from the Stanley Wi-Q locks is considered private, but some of the information can be used in aggregate, or in the case of an alleged criminal act, shared with police.

Beyond residence hall security, the C•CURE platform is also serving as the foundation for integration with other systems employed by Housing and Food Services and Residence Life, including the university’s eLiving platform that is used to track housing contracts and room assignments. The information from eLiving now flows directly into C•CURE 9000. Following this same formula is a separate access management system for staff, non-student and vendor access to residence halls, which integrates with C•CURE to streamline and automate processes, as well as enable stricter controls.