Bridging the Gap
Private college in rural Georgia upgrades access control system
- By Ellie Randall
- August 01, 2018
Young Harris College is a private, baccalaureate degreegranting
college located in the beautiful mountains of
North Georgia. Founded in 1886 and historically affiliated
with The United Methodist Church, Young Harris
College educates, inspires and empowers students
through the highest quality liberal arts education.
The college currently has more than 1,100 students across five divisions—
Education, Fine Arts, Humanities, Mathematics and Science,
and Social and Behavioral Sciences—and employs nearly 250 faculty
and staff. YHC was named to the 2017-2018 list of Colleges of Distinction,
and is also listed as a “Best National Liberal Arts College” by U.S.
News & World Report.
MOVING TO INTEROPERABLE ACCESS CONTROL
Young Harris College has recently completed major campus improvements
to accommodate their growth. These LEED-certified improvements
include the 121,000-square-foot Rollins Campus Center, new
residence facilities, and a 57,000-square-foot recreation and fitness
center. Hollis Townsend, Director of Technology Support & Operations
for YHC, saw this expansion as the perfect opportunity to
implement a state-of-the-art access control solution in the new
buildings, as well as upgrade the existing access control system in
other areas of the campus.
YHC’s previous access control provider posed numerous issues that
threatened the overall safety and security of the campus, including
licensing, annual maintenance contracts, and technical support to
name a few.
“The integrations we needed were stalled because we weren’t able to
upgrade the software every release due to costs," Townsend said. "And
calling in a problem was never a quick process.”
When searching for a new access control provider, Townsend cited
the security of students and protection of facilities as two of the biggest
challenges the new system needed to manage.
“We also wanted a system that worked seamlessly with our existing
Schlage locks, so Allegion provided us with about six manufacturers
for consideration,” Townsend said. “After review, we had three of those
companies come to campus for presentations.”
In addition to their partnership with Allegion and compatibility with Schlage locks, Open Options was awarded
the project because according to Townsend,
“their product had the most integration
options available, and they showed they were
in a position to continuously offer more.”
For over two decades, Open Options and
Mercury Security have worked together to
provide a true open architecture access control
solution. Open Options’ flagship access
control platform, DNA Fusion, interfaces
with a host of other systems, including intelligent
locks, video management systems, critical
communications, elevator systems, visitor
management, and many more.
“The whole upgrade process was pretty
painless," Townsend said. "The biggest issue
was that one of our largest buildings was in
heavy use during the upgrade, so we had a
very short window—one week to be exact—
to complete the work in that building."
Fortunately, the installation was rather
straightforward with only having to switch
out the building controllers, as all the existing
locks and wiring were already compatible
with DNA Fusion. Furthermore, transferring
cardholder and database information from
the old system to DNA Fusion was simplified
with Open Options’ OpenDX software.
OpenDX database exchange software provides
an easy-to-use interface for configuring
the data users want to transfer into their DNA
Fusion access control system. This powerful
tool removes the time-consuming task of
manually entering data across various business
systems, saving the organization significant
money and valuable resources. OpenDX
performs automated data transfers from any
valid data source.
USER-FRIENDLY FEATURES
ALLOW FOR EFFORTLESS
SECURITY MANAGEMENT
“As most access control system users do, YHC
utilizes access levels and time schedules campus-
wide to achieve maximum security, and
with DNA Fusion’s extremely intuitive feature
set—such as the drag and drop functionality
and global access levels—managing these
permissions is a breeze,” Townsend said. “For
example, if a person changes departments, we
can easily add or remove them from groups.”
As previously stated by Townsend, a huge
factor in the selection of Open Options as the
college’s access control provider was the company’s
extensive portfolio of technology partners
and integrated solutions. In addition to
integrating Schlage AD and NDE locks with
DNA Fusion, YHC also deploys Milestone
Systems’ XProtect software for their video
management needs.
The integration between DNA Fusion and
XProtect enables full control of live and
recorded video from XProtect through the
DNA Fusion client. DNA Fusion software
manages the entire access control system,
including door controllers and door hardware,
users, cards and access levels. The highly customizable
DNA Fusion client is used to configure,
maintain and monitor the access control
system including viewing live and recorded
video, integrated from XProtect software.
Other integration features include the ability
to view live video from graphical building
maps and from camera trees in the hardware
browser, as well as the ability to display multiple
monitor views and simultaneously play
back using built-in controls.
For streamlined security management,
Townsend and his team were adamant about
getting their Information Technology department
away from running the campus’s dayto-
day security operations, and to transition
that role to the designated security operators.
“Even though DNA Fusion is extremely
easy to manage because of its feature set, I
credit a lot of our knowledge on the product
to training,” Townsend said. “Because of the
training we received through Open Options,
the sessions we conduct for our users is typically
less than an hour.”
STUDENT SAFETY IS TOP PRIORITY
In addition to a well-rounded security solution,
YHC has numerous efforts in place to
streamline and control access, which in turn
increases the safety of students on campus.
Students are assigned credentials that are
used to gain entry to facilities campus-wide,
including residence halls, common student
areas, and more. YHC also requires students
present their access badge at elevators,
where the students are then are able to
choose from set floors depending on their
access level.
“Ultimately, we need to be able to provide
students access to their residence halls and
common areas, yet prevent them any additional
access without it being explicitly given,”
Townsend said. “I think the way our system is
configured does a good job of addressing that.”
Though Townsend and his team are happy
with the college’s current security solution, he
wants to stress this isn’t the end of the road for
system expansion.
“Future plans include implementing emergency
procedures and tying them into our
existing systems to keep our students safe,”
Townsend said. “Open Options is the standard
for our access control, and we look forward to
working with them, our other product vendors,
and our integrator, GC&E
Systems Group, to continue
upgrading our security.”
This article originally appeared in the August 2018 issue of Campus Security Today.