Enterprise Directory Integration - New Zealand Parliament

New Zealand Parliament uses a purpose built Enterprise Directory system for managing all personnel at the parliament buildings including members of parliament, their staff and family members, and members of Parliamentary Service. Enterprise Directory forms the master database system which then manages user records in other IT systems (such as email, domain controller, intranet etc).

RedCrater developed an interface module that integrates Enterprise Directory with Parliament’s physical access control platform (Cardax FT). This system automatically provisions users with access rights based on organisation unit and cards based on the type of user (e.g. external contractors, security staff, member of parliament etc). Both access rights and cards are controlled through a rules engine which is administered solely by the Security Manager.

The system provides operational savings as it eliminates the requirement for duplicate entry of data in the access control system. It also significantly improved the effectiveness of the security operations as both access rights and cards can be changed immediately as an appropriate change is made in Enterprise Directory. Furthermore, because the rules engine eliminates any ad-hoc changes, it ensures all cardholder access rights are policy driven which therefore provides New Zealand Parliament with a high level of control over personnel security privileges.

Cardholder Access & Authorisation System – Westpac NZ Ltd

Like many organisations Westpac wished to support distributed security administration to managers throughout the organisation but did not want to compromise the overall security of their facilities by allowing unfettered access control changes to be made.

To address this RedCrater developed the web based Cardholder Access and Authorisation System. This system allows Westpac managers to submit cardholder security changes, but in order for these changes to become effective a security manager is still required to approve each request. In this way the Cardholder Access and Authorisation System provides Westpac with all the flexibility of a distributed administration system without compromising security.

Mobile Radio Alarm Paging – Vale Inco

As part of the deployment of the Cardax FT access control system at their Goro Nickel mine in New Caledonia, Vale Inco needed it to interact with a mobile radio system both to allow Cardax alarms to be displayed on the mobile radios LCD screen and also to allow for alarm acknowledgements to be received from these radios back into Cardax FT.

RedCrater developed a Windows Service to interface to a tone encoder which was hardwired to a radio base unit. This Windows Service sends alarm notifications to the paging system which are filtered based on entries in a configuration file. Each mobile radio also includes a panic button which if pressed allows these panic alerts to be transferred to Cardax FT as a standard alarm. In addition to the paging support the Windows Service monitors for multiple invalid card reads from a single card, and when a threshold is reached (the default being 3 invalid card reads in 5 minutes) an alarm is transferred into Cardax FT.

Cardholder Management – Vale Inco

Vale Inco required additional custom software modules to meet cardholder and security requirements as part of a Cardax FT deployment at their Goro Nickel mine.

RedCrater developed a Cardholder Entry Module to assist with entering cardholder information, and a Cardholder Access Report to show which cardholders are currently onsite.

The Cardholder Entry module is a Windows application which provides greater parameter checking for entering Personal Data Fields over and above that which is provided for in Cardax FT. It allows new cards to be assigned to cardholders as well as Access Groups to be changed, and it supports camera capture from Windows Imaging and Acquisition (WIA) compatible cameras.

The Cardholder Access Report produces a CSV report of cardholders and their access which is made available through a web page. It supports two report sub-types; a ‘Now’ report ‘which reports on cardholders currently in a selected zone or onsite, and a ‘Historical’ report which reports on cardholder access activity (either based on a particular zone or across all zones) over a selected time period.

Time and Attendance - Air New Zealand

Air New Zealand Engineering Services required development of custom software to allow Cardax Remote Arming Terminals to be combined with Cardax Readers for time and attendance recording.

RedCrater developed a Windows Service to process the Cardax Remote Arming Terminal and reader events into time and attendance messages. The time and attendance events are presented on an IBM WebSphere message queue for subsequent processing into Peoplesoft and other Air New Zealand applications.

Energy Security Interface – St Peters School

In order to reduce electricity costs and increase environmental awareness among students and staff, St Peter's School wanted to maximise the efficiency of their heat pump based classroom heating and cooling.

RedCrater developed an interface between the school’s Cardax FT security platform and the school management database to optimise the efficiency of air-conditioner use by automatically turning air-conditioners on and off based on whether rooms are scheduled to be used, or whether the rooms are actually being used. It uses a variety of control methods including simple schedule-only control to a combination of scheduled, occupation detection via security sensors, manual override and security alarm controlled. The Energy Security Interface solution has provided St Peters a reduction of 50% in their heating and cooling costs with return on investment achieved in only 14 months.

Energy Security Interface is the only security based energy efficiency system available which provides the interface between an organisation’s physical security system and either a building management system or direct power control relays to minimise electricity consumption for lighting and/or air-conditioning.

Contact our Security Solutions Specialist to find out more about our security related projects.