The Challenge
AAA recognized the need to stand up a new security command center to monitor and protect their more than 1,000 branch locations throughout North America. The goal of the command center was to consolidate their operations and handle increasing volumes. Equally, they wanted to reduce the complexity that had developed over time. The Security team was tasked with onboarding new technology, new team members, and improved security procedures simultaneously–all while continuing to protect the organization.
SENIOR MANAGEMENT DEFINED THE OBJECTIVE AS:
“The key objective is the protection and safety of our employees, properties, and assets. By having a consistent level of security across all locations, the PSIM system should enable Auto Club Enterprise to improve situational aware- ness to help identify and resolve security issues and prevent crime so as to minimize risk. This system should accelerate incident response time so as to ensure security compliance as well as to provide data analytics and business intelligence dashboards”.
-Scott Phemister
Head of Security & Business Continuity at AAA
The Solution
The focus of the first phase of the project was to deploy redundant infrastructure, integrate their key security system, and standardize operational responses.
The IT infrastructure for the platform was deployed across multiple data centers, delivering full redundancy in both the local facility and across their network. The deployment followed the strict UL 1981 standard for running a monitoring center. This certification was critical because it allowed AAA to self-monitor and eliminate their third-party monitoring costs.
Using off-the-shelf integrations, the key video, access control systems, and alarm and burglar alarms were integrated into SureView to ensure users had a universal interface when responding to events. In addition to physical security systems, integration with their business risk system provided the team with critical external alerts that might impact the assets, employees, and customers of AAA.
In the operations center, the team developed response plans to their most common security and risk events. Developing simple-to-follow checklists, these action plans walk their operators through a consistent set of steps, accelerating incident response time and ensuring security compliance.
In the next phase of the project, AAA connected their field team with their SOC operations, using the SureView Mobile app. This allowed them to track the real-time status and location of available staff. The operational efficiencies that have been gained in the SOC could now be extended into the hands of their field officers.
The Results
- With over 20 operators in the center and a high turnover rate (+/- 20% annually) the average training time for new staff decreased from 6 hours to just 1 hour
- Combining Access control, camera views, mass notifications, reporting, and investigating into one simple work- flow inside a single application allowed the security response to improve by more than 80%
- Enhanced resilience–seamlessly failover between operations centers in California and Texas with extended versatility to run remote SOC when command centers are physically inaccessible
