Giving Analog the Boot
Native American casino invests heavily in updated technology
- By Andrew Elvish
- Apr 01, 2015
Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino is a Native American casino located
in Mendocino County, California. With a gaming space of
approximately 9,000 square feet, the casino is packed with 220 gaming
machines, numerous card tables and a favorite local restaurant,
the Creekside Café.
Employing more than 260 people and with a total capacity of 1,200 guests,
Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino draws in crowds of gaming enthusiasts looking
to score the next big jackpot.
With thousands of people and hundreds of employees involved in various functions
related to money moving in and out of Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino,
video surveillance, even in accordance with the National Indian Gaming Association
(NIGA), is an essential and intricate part of this heavy cash operating business.
Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino, like the majority of casinos nationwide,
did employ an older VCR-based analog security surveillance system but after 13
years of operation, they eventually began to realize that the outdated technology
did not serve them as well as it once had.
With the need to respect the Sherwood Valley Gaming Commission and NIGA
standards, Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino was accumulating a large amount
of equipment and VCR tapes to record video footage from different sensitive areas
around the casino. When incidents on the casino floor did occur, security operators
were also constrained with a tedious and time-consuming process of having
to remove a VCR tape, rewind it, search for the incident in question and also
make sure to put a replacement tape back into the VCR recorder. This dated video
recording technology ultimately caused delays in investigative procedures, and inhibited
security operators to act swiftly in case of urgent security breaches such as
table fraud, blacklisted patrons, or deceitful cash or key exchanges.
With notable expansion plans of a brand new facility, which would be three
times the size of the current casino looming in the near future, Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino also questioned whether it would
be wise to transition their VCR-based system over
to the new facility. Their concerns mainly revolved
around whether their hardware matrix system would
be able to effectively manage the volumes of video
and data that are required to uphold the standards
of safety and security for all employees and guests of
the new facility.
Keeping an open mind to the technology on the
market and realizing the value of a solid relationship
with their integrator, Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino
turned to Brody Carlson, president of Connections
IT to get the process of selecting a new video
surveillance solution underway.
Casino Security Needs
In an environment such as a casino where the gaming
floor is encompassed by masses of people, where the
vulnerability of fraud is high, and where massive cash
exchanges need to be under constant scrutiny, a major
security system overhaul is a decision that is not made
swiftly, nor taken lightly.
Given the mandate to find a new video surveillance
solution, Kani Neves, executive director of the
Sherwood Valley Gaming Commission, set out to
rigorously research all the technologies available on the market in order to find the most
optimal solution for the current and
future needs of Sherwood Valley Rancheria
Casino.
“We were looking for a solution that
would allow us to stay up-to-date with
the latest advancements in technology,
and from an observational and surveillance
standpoint, increase our ability to
respond to incidents more efficiently,”
Neves said.
Knowing that there were many
options from a technology selection
standpoint, Neves demoed digital VCR
solutions, DVR solutions and several
advanced IP-based virtual matrix solutions
but was ultimately looking for
a system that would give his team the
tools to be expeditious in response to
time-sensitive incidents. More than
that, he was looking for a system that
would be flexible enough to allow him
to keep some existing hardware investments,
as well as more technologically
advanced which would permit him to
grow the system seamlessly in the future
when the new 50,000 square foot
facility would be ready.
When Neves finally had the chance
to visit a nearby casino that had been
using Genetec’s advanced IP surveillance
solution, Omnicast, he quickly
realized, hands-on, the benefits that
a surveillance system of such caliber
could offer Sherwood Valley Rancheria
Casino.
The Perfect Solution
More than what they originally expected,
the new system fulfilled all of
Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino’s
needs and was the perfect fit for their
security team, providing them with
even more system functionalities than
they ever dreamed possible. Initially,
the 170 existing analog Pelco cameras
were integrated on the virtual matrix
system and another 25 new IP cameras
were installed in sensitive cash areas
and other more vulnerable parts of
the casino. The entire system runs off
three servers, including the use of one
failover server for an additional backup
of archived video.
“The flexibility of the system is key,”
Neves said. “The fact that Omnicast
can manage an originally analog-based
system and then can still give us the
ability to move comfortably into the future
as everything goes IP-based is certainly
a great advantage to have.”
Although, in the beginning, coming
from a VCR-based technology, the security
operators were somewhat intimidated
by the advanced technology, they
soon realized how easy it was to maneuver
through the intuitive interface
as well as how simple it was to implement
their policies and procedures into
the system.
“The interface was a huge bonus,”
Neves said. “There are multiple ways
of doing one or two different functions,
allowing for so much adaptability. If
one person wants to use the mouse to control the PTZ, or the keyboard, they
have that option. And if some operators
are not comfortable with the new
technology, they still even have the option
of using the old joystick. Simply
put, you can really custom-fit yourself
to the system.”
In addition to the impressive flexibility
and user-friendliness of the Omnicast
system, Sherwood Valley Rancheria
Casino’s security team quickly took
advantage of its other cutting-edge features.
They began using the advanced
alarm notifications and motion detection
integration to monitor areas such
as cashier posts and highly-sensitive entry
and exit points throughout the facility.
Also, for the table games that were
intended to be monitored 24 hours per
day, they used Omnicast’s dynamic
boost quality functionality to configure
cameras to CIF resolution when there
was no detected motion and 4CIF
when motion was triggered within the
video. Using this functionality allowed
Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino to
not only archive more pertinent data in
higher quality, but also contributed to
significant bandwidth savings.
A few key employees as well as the
integrator have also become accustomed
to using the remote access capabilities
of the system. Since only commissioners
can approve jackpots won
more than $10,000, the remote access
feature of Omnicast has proven to be
extremely beneficial, as authorities can
access video directly from their home to
approve such wins or even review other
video where suspicion or fowl play may
have been involved. Additionally, in
case of unidentifiable technical issues,
their integrator, Connections IT, can
also remotely connect to the system to
see if they can pinpoint any problems,
providing immediate support.
As Neves was “very happy” with
the implementation of the system, he
stated the following to reiterate to the
contentment of his Omnicast selection:
“From an observation and surveillance
standpoint, the work is going to be the
same. Just the tools that we have to be
able to do things, to respond quicker,
and to look into events expeditiously
are much more advanced. [Omnicast]
has enhanced everything that we were
trying to do.”
As highly sensitive areas, cash and
key exchanges, and critical access
points throughout the casino are being
monitored by operators daily; the
tangible benefits are becoming more
obvious. Already, they have been able
to validate the fabrication of some
patrons’ complaints, quickly identify
customers who have been blacklisted,
and catch visitors playing club member
cards that have been accidently left in
the machine, all together avoiding major
legal implications.
Not having to deal with VCR tapes,
the ease of archiving and archive retrieval
was an additional feature they
came to really benefit from as well. “If the operator happens not to catch [an incident] while watching the video footage,
the ease of going back through the archive, pulling it up on screen almost instantaneously
and letting the security personnel know the details as they walk out to
address the situation, has helped us improve our response times,” Neves said.
Nevertheless, the flexibility of Omnicast’s open-architecture platform has certainly
been the most important benefit for Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino.
“We needed a system that would conform to our existing setup with analog and
coax cables everywhere, give us the ease and flexibility of new technology but yet
also, would be able to expand and adapt to our new casino and new environment,”
Neves said. “Omnicast did that, and that is the reason why Genetec has been the
best solution for us.”
With plans in the near future to build the brand-new facility that will boast an
additional 400 game tables and that will be more amenities based with more commercial
areas, sports bars and restaurants, Sherwood Valley Rancheria Casino will
need to triple the amount of cameras in their current location and Omnicast will
effectively be able to accommodate all their growth objectives. “The Genetec solution
has enabled us to continue to grow and be a part of the new technology of the
near future, and that is a big asset,” Neves said.
Ultimately, choosing Omnicast amongst a vast selection of other solutions on
the market has certainly proven to be the best decision for Sherwood
Valley Rancheria Casino. Today, their guests are safe and
their heavy cash operating business is protected while tomorrow,
their expansion will definitely have the same level of heightened
security.
This article originally appeared in the April 2015 issue of Security Today.