Credit Control

Businesses don’t come much bigger than Credit Suisse First Boston. When Credit Suisse and CS First Boston merged in 1997, they created one of the top five investment banking houses in the world; CSFB took in $9.8 billion worldwide in revenues last year.

The number of staff based at its European headquarters in London’s Canary Wharf has increased three-fold, from 2,000 to 6,000 employees, in the past two years alone. In fact, CSFB has become the largest tenant in Canary Wharf. As a result, management has had to increase office space dramatically — and radically upgrade its security systems.

Having originally occupied ten floors of a 22-storey building, the company has now taken over the entire office block, and expanded into two adjacent buildings to provide a total of 1.3 million square feet of office space, including a food court, shops and a health club featuring the country’s only suspended swimming pool.

The task facing the security team was a daunting one: to integrate three access control systems and upgrade the CCTV system, using existing cabling and minimising disruption to staff.

David Scott, vice-president for security at CSFB, decided he had to re-evaluate the access control and CCTV systems: “The systems’ old technology couldn’t really cope with the proposed expansion in staff numbers and office space,” he recalls. Scott ended up persuading company directors to spend £2 million to complete the project, which was more money than was originally budgeted for the upgrade, proving that wheeler-dealing isn’t confined to the trading floors.

Scott has worked for CSFB for seven years while his deputy, Trevor Gannon, has been on the security team for a decade. With the security installer, B & P Security Services Ltd, which has worked with the bank for 12 years, they were able to plan and manage the contract in-house, without bringing in consultants.

A database nightmare

The bank decided to dispense with the three access control systems previously used in the then multi-tenanted building. Gannon explains: “The systems’ databases didn’t talk to each other, so processing an ID card became an administrative nightmare. For a person to get into this building, they had to be processed three times.”

The choice of new access control system was heavily influenced by the need to carry out the entire security upgrade without disrupting staff. The fact that the bank wanted existing cabling re-used restricted the final choice of access control system, reveals Keith Buist, managing director of B & P Security: “The bank basically had to choose between three.”

CSFB selected a Casi-Rusco access control system, which not only solved the problem at Canary Wharf but also links up effortlessly to company offices in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, explains David Hunnam, European support manager for Casi-Rusco: “You don’t have to worry about connection. Using a Micro 5PXN field panel, the bank’s Budapest office was able to plug directly into its WAN and connect up to the London system.” A door in Milan, for instance, can be opened remotely from the London site in 16 milliseconds.

Chinese walls

Security has come out of the dark ages, and the technology is there to assist all business groups...it raises our credibility throughout the company.

David Scott, vice-president, security, CSFB

In a banking environment, internal controls are as important as external controls. Regulators require investment banks to ensure that no insider trading takes place, and CSFB is serious about maintaining “Chinese Walls”. There are certain areas within the building, such as the equities trading floor, where access is restricted on a need-to-have basis — only senior security management can issue ID cards to these areas, on a zone-by-zone basis.

At the main entrance, security is less obtrusive.

Most CSFB staff gain entrance to the building through the company’s new Boon Edam Transpalock half-height turnstiles, situated just inside the building’s main entrance. These are replacements for Tourlock “capsule” turnstiles, also supplied by Boon Edam, which were judged to be too imposing for a main entrance. However, as they were still perfectly serviceable, they’ve been deployed to secondary entrances. Scott explains: “They were the ultimate turnstile as far as a deterrent to someone getting into the building — they have so many safety features. But they were a bit claustrophobic for the main entrance.”

The new turnstiles are bespoke units, with longer arms to make it easier for staff to bring bags through. They feature glass panels and oak handrails to blend in with the décor. They provide effective security, too. If someone attempts to gain access illegally by “tailgating” — that is, following closely behind an authorised cardholder — the turnstiles will stop and gently reverse them out.

Each staff ID card incorporates two different card technologies — Wiegand for access control, and Magstripe for cashless vending. Gannon explains why CSFB has eschewed smart cards in favour of older technology: “Wiegand is old technology, but it’s reliable, and globally, to swap out in excess of 12,000 cards is another huge budget,” he says. “The smart card is still in its infancy, and there still isn’t a European standard.”

For issuing cards there is a new security reception room, in the space previously occupied by the security control room. This resolved the undesirable situation which had staff and building contractors queuing together in a fire exit corridor. Meanwhile, the control room has been given more space.

Room with a view

Not many control rooms can boast the space and pleasant working environment of the one at CSFB. “Traditionally, security is given the last room in the building,” says Scott. “And because we’d integrated various security systems, it had become very crowded.”

The emphasis during the design phase was on light and space. Along one wall of the room, there are floor-to-ceiling windows which let in natural light and give security staff a view of the outside world. Passers-by, however, cannot see in. The room is also well-protected in the event of a terrorist attack.

It features only a handful of CCTV monitors. “You see in city centre control rooms banks of CCTV screens and you might only have one or two operators there. They can’t possibly watch them all,” claims Gannon. The team’s philosophy is very much “reporting by exception”.

“We’ve integrated our access control and CCTV systems so that anything critical that happens is brought to guards’ attention straight away,” Gannon says. Routine events are recorded but not flagged up.

If you have a valid security card and you can get into the areas that you're allowed to get into, I don't need to know about it.

Trevor Gannon, assistant vice-president, on "managing by exception"

Not that the security staff sit around doing nothing. A number of other building functions are controlled from the room, including intruder and fire alarms, air conditioning, lighting and lifts. A new special contractors’ entrance is also situated in an adjoining room, so security staff can issue keys and radios to contractors. CSFB uses a team of 14 contract security staff, provided by Trident Safeguards.

Digital delivers

With the site’s CCTV system getting bigger — there are now 295 cameras deployed around the premises — the security team decided to review its CCTV recording media. Out went analogue technology, and in came 12 Loronix M32 Wavelet Digital Recorders. The system, which can record at a rate of one frame per second, is the same type of system in use at Bluewater Park Shopping Centre in Kent.

Scott cannot speak highly enough of it: “It’s probably the most significant technology we’ve introduced — it has changed our lives.”

“With the Loronix Review Station, I can review large volumes of tape very, very quickly. You can highlight and scan a particular area and the system will automatically search through the database and identify the occasions when something or someone moved in that area.” Thanks to this quick search facility, the company’s detection rate when investigating crimes has risen significantly.

The system is capable of some serious ‘big brother’ surveillance. For instance, the system can be programmed to edit footage from many cameras in time sequence, creating a movie of a person moving through the building.

Digital saves space and requires little human intervention. For archiving video (for 30 days per Home Office recommendations), the new system uses AITs (Advanced Intelligent Tapes) which are stored in a digital tape “jukebox”. The AITs record footage from the hard drives, and guards don’t have to touch the AITs at all — the entire process is automated. To view archived footage, the AIT dumps the images back to a hard-drive where it can be accessed on the review station.

Tapes are bar-coded so even if they were taken out and put back in the wrong slots, the system would still find the right ones.

CSFB has installed new cameras, too. Fast-tracking dome cameras keep an eye on the trading floor, while miniature and PTZ (pan, tilt and zoom) cameras watch over the building’s access points. The PTZ cameras can be controlled by control room staff using Petards touchscreen technology.

Credit where it’s due

While the security systems are very much Trevor Gannon’s domain, but when it comes to an investigation into fraud, Scott plays the leading role. “The security team can provide the legal and compliance department with information on who went in to a building and when, using access control and CCTV data,” he explains. “We’ve developed a good relationship with other departments, such as compliance and internal audit.”

One area of security Scott has yet to embrace fully is asset tagging. It would be almost impossible, he says, to respond to an alarm triggered by someone removing an item from the building that isn’t theirs. Scott asks : “What if an alarm goes off and 40 people have just gone through our turnstiles at once? How do you work out who was carrying the laptop?”