Helping Students and Staff Stay Safe on Campus
Located in scenic Lancaster Pennsylvania is a college with a century’s worth of history focused on health sciences, PA College of Health Sciences. This focus affords their students nearly 20 degree options and provides an affiliation with the Penn Medicine Lancaster General Health system. Their excellence in the education of health sciences and partnership building helps them provide their students with the leadership qualities and continuous thirst for knowledge that makes their culture one of the most sought-after in the region.
Challenge
To ensure their students have a safe and secure campus environment, the PA College of Health Sciences chose Hammer Tech to assist in the design and implementation of an upgraded Campus Wide Security Camera Project. While we have had a long term relationship with the college, we also have built a reputation amongst other local colleges, universities, and the like for our competencies in the design and implementation of large campus security camera platforms.
Solutions
Our process starts with design discussion to determine the ability any existing data center infrastructure; while the college had a data center on campus, it was clear that this design could leverage some on premise storage, but mostly a cloud managed interface would be ideal to lower the capital costs and overall IT footprint in the data center. We chose Meraki as the platform for this engagement – with high definition cameras, onboard storage capabilities, encrypted communications, and more, these cameras would serve the college well. This platform also allows us provision access to specific staff, departments, and do so both on or off campus without the need for VPNs.
In addition to the cameras, there was a need to support some areas of the campus for camera access via wireless, so our scope included a few wireless access points and network switch hardware to extend our connections to ensure we could provide adequate bandwidth and do so securely. Once again, we leveraged Meraki to provide the answer.
Results
Today, the over 2000 folks who work and learn on this campus can do so in an environment that is protected by Meraki. These cameras allow the security and operations team to keep a watchful eye on the campus while the rest of us can focus on our studies.
With the design and implementation of the Meraki platforms by Hammer Tech, the PA College of Health Sciences can be sure they are providing an enhanced level of community safety around campus.
