Casino Doesn’t Bet on Security
Expansion at California card games facility includes security upgrade
- By Ken LaMarca
- Feb 01, 2014
Located in Ventura, Calif.,
Players Casino is a newly
relocated and remodeled
California card room with
28 tables for live poker,
blackjack and other card games. The
casino itself is a single, large building of
approximately 30,000 square feet, connected
to a large parking lot.
In 2010, this casino initiated a largescale,
three-phase expansion of facility
operations with integrator Customized
Contractor Services (CCS) in Long
Beach, Calif., a full-service contractor
that specializes in turnkey solutions.
CCS’s Ryan Gleason was assigned as
project manager. This project eventually
included video surveillance, access control,
point of sale (POS), audio, data infrastructure,
data security and domain/
file share as an integrated solution.
During the first phase of the project,
“megapixel and IP video really had not
been adopted yet at any wide scale in the
gaming industry,” Gleason said. “Bosch
analog cameras were installed, with approximately
120 cameras in place by the
time the second and third phases began
in March 2011. At that point, there was
very strong feedback from the gaming
community about the growth possibilities
and being able to maintain compliance
with a simple, software upgrade.”
For phases two and three of this gaming
installation, as camera counts began
increasing dramatically, manpower for
monitoring became another significant
issue as well as tracking and noting incidents
and events, making an IP system
with a VMS essential.
Searching for the Perfect VMS
Players Casino requested demos and
ultimately selected OnSSI’s Ocularis,
using encoders to migrate
many of their existing
analog cameras to
avoid the expense and
inconvenience of having
to rip and replace
every camera. One
key factor in the decision
for Ocularis was the software’s fast
and easy training for both new and seasoned
employees.
F. Michel Velo, IT director and surveillance
supervisor for Players Casino, led
his team in making their choice of VMS.
“It’s an easy-to-use interface that
provides all the functionality you need
for day-to-day surveillance operations,”
Velo said. “Unlike older analog systems,
with cumbersome controls and difficult-to-understand modules, this software
makes it easy to get the most out of your
surveillance system without needing to
be an expert. The ease of use is a huge
benefit when training your surveillance
operators.”
According to Gleason, the system enables
surveillance operators to learn how
to use the system in minutes, and to respond
quickly.
“The operators running the system
required an easy-to-use, quick interface
to respond to incidents quickly,” Gleason
said. “Being able to link camera actions
together into a series of events simplifies
how many actions are required for operators
to actually pull up the appropriate
cameras. Training for new recruits can be
conducted in as little as 15 minutes.”
Going one step further, Gleason contends
that data on the Ocularis is completely
safe.
“Ocularis is also able to ensure no
data is ever lost,” Gleason said. “Because
of Ocularis and the expandable nature
of the system, we’re able to make this
system 100 percent fail-safe. You really
couldn’t get that with any type of analog
system and that’s why the gaming community
is starting to embrace IP. That’s
the approach that Players was going toward with OnSSI; they need to know
that they’re not going to have any loss
of data.”
In Control of Budget
Since budget was an issue, it was important
to deploy a solution with an unlimited
number of client connections.
Players Casino did not want to be faced
with sudden, unexpected costs in the
future when adding clients.
“There wasn’t a nickel-and-dime aspect
to the installation and expansion
of the system,” Gleason said. “I think
that is big, especially for gaming properties
where they’re not interested in
hidden costs; they want to know what
it’s going to cost. With Ocularis, they
can have as many clients as they want.
They can keep their clients on a USB
and install it freely as they like.”
The first steps toward a fully-integrated
solution have been taken with
the software, delivering automatic notifications
when specific doors open and
close. Because the system gives triggered
alerts, it also helps Players search
for footage. For example, when looking
for something that occurred around the
same time that the count room door
opened, they can review their log and
view footage from that specific timeframe.
In the near future, the casino
plans to integrate access control as well
as POS into the system.
“With this software, the end user
has an all-inclusive, no-headaches approach
to the installation,” Gleason
said. “They did not want something
that was going to cost them a lot of
money to maintain year after year.”
A Satisfied Casino
Players Casino is using a combination
of 3-megapixel, 1080p and 720p Axis
cameras, as well as Bosch analog cameras
on encoders with an Axis high-density
rack. For their remote parking lots
that, by law, must be under surveillance,
they have a Cisco wireless bridge system
that is point-to-point transmission encrypted.
Gleason said that Players Casino
has maintained 100 percent uptime
for all remote parking lot surveillance
without ever dropping a frame.
For recording, the casino has a custom-
built server with an NVR farm using
super high-performance machines
with Intel chipsets and direct-attached
storage that pulls the footage at high
speed. Both the network infrastructure
and data security were provided by CCS.
Players’ executive management is
highly satisfied with the system.
“With a secure remote connection in
place, we can browse footage from anywhere
with an Internet connection as
easily as if we were connecting remotely
to check our office email,” Velo said. “I
can easily log into the recording servers
and perform any maintenance that
needs to be done.”
While the video surveillance system
now in place at Players Casino is
quite sophisticated, the successful casino
already has plans for expansion.
Additional megapixel cameras will be
deployed in the parking lots, replacing
current analog cameras on encoders.
As the property adds business value,
the software can continue to grow with
the installation.
“Because Ocularis is a Windows-based
application, it can be more easily
integrated into our business’ computer
network and is easier to configure when
compared with old, traditional analog
systems,” Velo said. “This has made it
easier for us to distribute secured access
to the system via any compatible,
Windows-based PC.”
This article originally appeared in the February 2014 issue of Security Today.