Industry Professional
Global Expansion
Paramount Pictures seeks right operations for enhanced security and asset protection
Founded in 1912, and with many successful
films to its name including “The Godfather,”
“Indiana Jones,” “Transformers,” and “Mission:
Impossible,” Paramount Pictures is one of
America’s oldest movie studios.
With 10 critical security systems including perimeter
protection, fire alarm, intrusion, access control
and video surveillance systems using different operating
systems, the company needed a way to centrally
monitor and manage incidents for improved response
times and better overall protection. With these disparate
systems, it took multiple operators in the command
center to respond to an incident, not including
the responders on the ground, which meant that
Paramount needed a more efficient and effective way
to respond.
For the highest level of security possible, Paramount
chose to invest in enterprise command center
software (ECCS) by SureView Systems to consolidate
all of its security and life safety systems across
the globe in a simple, effective and centrally manageable
security management solution. Paramount
combined emergency management, emergency response
and business continuity under the Business
Resiliency Group to more effectively identify risks
and mitigation practices, and to expand the role of
its private command center beyond the monitoring
of its production lots to providing 24/7 monitoring
of global operations.
Adding Something Simple
The SureView Immix CC enterprise platform met the
company’s need for a simple, user-friendly interface
that wasn’t over-complicated and didn’t require a lot
of time to install, configure and learn. The platform
also is UL certified for alarm monitoring.
Using the new system, two operators, an analyst
and a supervisor centrally monitor security systems
across Paramount’s global operations 24/7, including
all offices, production lots, warehouses, active film
shoots and more than 250 traveling executives and
team members each day.
The company has integrated the platform with a
majority of its existing security systems, and is currently
adding its emergency notification and dispatch
systems. With support from SureView, Paramount’s
in-house IT department managed the installation,
which was seamless and completed on time. Representatives
from SureView were a part of the installation
and training process from the beginning. After
just a couple of hours of training, users were up and
running on the Immix CC platform.
Paramount’s new platform now has an intuitive
operator interface, which streamlines incident management
across all disparate systems within the enterprise,
and helps boost the command center’s overall
productivity.
Prioritizing by Importance
Paramount’s security officials can now see when
alarms are activated and they are prioritized by importance.
Before Immix CC, security operators would
have hundreds of alarms coming in at any given time.
The platform has acted as a smart system that presents
only the most critical alarms—not every door
that is held open too long—and has reduced the number
of incoming alarms by approximately 90 percent.
Now, operators can process alerts in minutes, improving
efficiencies and, more importantly, response time
to emergency incidents.
The platform’s scripting engine has proven extremely
useful. Paramount was interested in the new command
center platform that allowed security officials
build custom decision trees for operators to follow to
ensure a single, streamlined response to similar incidents.
With a script in hand, operators can more easily
and quickly respond appropriately to any incident.
“Paramount made it very clear that they were
seeking something different,” said Graham Johnson,
Group CEO, SureView Systems. “We showed them
our Immix CC framework which from the ground up,
was developed to be easy to install, set up, operate
and maintain. From start to substantial completion,
this project took less than 120 days to move into a
full production environment, which is important to a
large enterprise such as Paramount.”
Most importantly, the platform has helped Paramount
streamline security operations to boost the
safety and security of employees, and better protect
its assets.
This article originally appeared in the December 2015 issue of Security Today.