Telecommunications Company

Customer: Canadian National Telecommunications Company

Background and Customer Challenge

After multiple acquisitions and mergers, the organization was administering and maintaining four access control systems and five video platforms with no centralized cardholder and access level data sources.  The challenge was to replace all existing physical systems with a single scalable, integrated solution while minimizing impact to day to day activities.

With distributed cardholder databases and access levels, the organization had to manage security on numerous systems, requiring a significant amount of redundant administration activities and cumbersome processes.  The existing systems were either end of life or support and maintenance for those technologies was unavailable. Compliance requirement for the publicly traded company to document procedural compliance was also a challenge.

CONTAVA Solution

CONTAVA implemented a nationwide integrated access and video system by retrofitting or installing access control on over 3400 doors and integrating 2000 cameras without compromising the security of the organization’s people and assets. The solution includes not only physical access control and video, but intrusion integration, administration and badging of an 80,000 cardholder database, a reduction in access levels by over 90%, a security control center implementation, and integration with logical access.

CONTAVA worked with the company to deploy a new enterprise fault tolerant management system on its existing enterprise IT infrastructure and integrate the system with logical access solution.  This was followed by an aggressive program to retrofit all existing access control hardware across the country and update CCTV system head-ends as required. CONTAVA brought standards to the hardware installation leaving a maintainable, scalable and safer system. Upgrades were deployed at retail, corporate offices and data centers from Halifax to Victoria.  Leading edge technologies were employed including biometric authentication and wireless backhaul over a High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) network securely routed through a Multi Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network.

Project Results

The new security access control system now incorporates video, access control, and intrusion all on one platform. Also a centralized cardholder database with logical integration resulted in a massive reduction in the cardholder management and provisioning process.  The organization also now has single point of contact for maintenance and service of their system from coast to coast.

Location: Nation Wide
Scope of Work: Regional rollout of building systems, in total to replace 1,500 doors and 800 cameras
Length of Contract: Four years beginning in 2008
Contract Value: $8.0M