5 ways disparate security systems are costing transit authorities

Advances in technology are empowering transit authorities to offer better and more efficient service for commuters, but many cities find internal barriers, such as siloed departments and budget constraints slowing or even preventing them from taking advantage of these innovations.

For many public transit authorities, physical security solutions are often selected according to each departments’ independent needs. For instance, the bus division may use a completely different technology set than the light rail division, which in turn can be completely different from the one used by commuter trains. If the solutions chosen by these different departments are proprietary, and not built on an openarchitecture framework this can easily become an expensive problem when it comes time to integrate or upgrade technologies.

In our last blog post, we discussed how mass transit agencies can benefit from collaboration. In this post, we’ll break down how, over time, a siloed approach results in a complicated patchwork of technology, which slows communications, strains resources, and ultimately costs more than modernizing your security.

 

 

Top 5 issues to consider

1. Silos

How many team members across your organization are managing all these disparate security systems? When each business unit has its separate technology, it requires more staff and training and makes communicating and sharing information between different departments more complex.

Siloed systems are simply inefficient. With a unified physical security system, you can bring all of these sources of data, from all different divisions, seamlessly together in one single interface. When different departments can collaborate and view information within one unified systems it improves security, creates gains in operational efficiency, provides better service to commuters, and can lead to huge savings on staff and training.

 

 

2. Hardware

When the VMS on your vehicles is different from those on your platform and maintenance hubs, the extra hardware costs add up quickly. Not only do you have data being stored on different systems that don’t communicate with each other, but you also end up with separate management servers and workstations for each VMS. You may also require multiple access control systems (ACS) and automatic license plate recognition (ALPR) systems, with their dedicated management servers. All of this hardware takes up precious rack space in the data center, requires additional ports on your switches, additional IP addresses on your network, and more power supplies, which use more electricity. There is also an increase in the cost and resources required for your IT staff or service provider to maintain this additional hardware.

With a unified physical security system, you can manage VMS, ACS, ALPR on fewer servers which will simplify your overall hardware maintenance costs.

3. Video evidence

Transit customers often use more than one mode of public transportation during their daily commute and don’t even realize it. Since the commuter train division might be completely different than the bus, metro, or city bike rental division for example, if video footage is scattered across several different departments, it takes operators from various divisions to sift through the video evidence which can take weeks, or even months to put together. Then they may have to share it with law enforcement without any verifiable and documented handling of evidence (chain of custody).

With a unified security platform, video footage can be automatically uploaded and stored in a secure location where it can be instantly and easily found and viewed. And if law enforcement needs access, a transit operator can quickly share watermarked digital files that are authenticated, encrypted, and time-stamped to ensure the evidence can be used in court.

4. Upgrades

Over time, the costs associated with maintaining several disparate systems, purchasing multiple maintenance agreements for each vendor, keeping security and IT teams trained and up to date, and ensuring compatibility between several systems through upgrades add up without warning. These expenses accumulate over time and quickly overtake the initial cost to purchase your security systems altogether.

When selecting new hardware, it’s important to choose products that are not locked into proprietary software systems. Look for open-architecture solutions that are ONVIF-compliant. This means they have a standardized interface that conforms with industry standards for interoperability, so you can easily upgrade or add hardware over time as your needs change.

With a unified security platform, your organization can take control of these lifetime expenditures and avoid many others altogether.

5. Cyber threats

An improperly installed or inadequately secured device that’s part of the IoT can have a huge impact. Without the proper protection, cybercriminals can gain access to vulnerable devices, including video surveillance cameras and door controllers, and attack all manner of sensitive data and systems. Whether you calculate the damage in terms of financial loss or violation or denial of service, the results can be devastating.

With a unified physical security platform, you can develop solutions that can secure all aspects of your system, including communications, servers, and data, both on-premises and in the Cloud. With strategies including security at the edge, encryption, authentication, and authorization.

Is it time to start thinking about upgrading?

It’s not just budget limitations that hold back your progress. Transit authorities are also bound by the terms of existing contracts. Yet forward-thinking transit agencies are already putting the pieces in place to upgrade IT infrastructure and move toward a unified security platform.