INDUSTRY PROFESSIONAL

Keeping Your Eye on the Ball

Stadium perimeter security also mean keeping access under control

Potential security threats keep evolving. It’s a distressing reality that we continually need to adapt to—one that particularly weighs heavily on the minds of stakeholders at major sports venues as they explore security solutions to prevent drone, vehicular and other dangerous assaults.

Strong Countermeasures
Fortunately, perimeter security regulations and league standards for strong countermeasures are now in place to help form a primary line of defense. Instrumental among them are access control technologies.

For stadiums and arenas, balancing the fan experience with strengthened security measures presents challenges. How do you maintain an inviting, festive game day atmosphere while strictly adhering to rules and ensuring safety without projecting an invasive, fortress-like setting?

Designing the most effective security technology and procedures into new sports facility construction as well as upgrades to existing ones takes true teamwork. It requires professional team owners, athletic department leaders, venue operators, law enforcement and consultants to invest intensive energy and time to carefully evaluate the unique attributes of a venue and what it will take to protect it.

What’s included in a facility’s perimeter security complement of technology and solutions depends on what the owner, architect, developer and jurisdiction want and require as well as how they want the venue to look and be accessed by the public—a blend of security, convenience and aesthetics.

Perimeter security includes bollards, walls and other barriers for vehicle standoff distancing and preventing hostile vehicle attacks; gate control and screening for fans and visitors; fences to keep out nefarious intruders; credentialed access control to parking and entries for players and staff; and special locks for hatches and doors to limit access to and from rooftops and tunnels.

Unmanned Infrastructure—Less Obvious yet Equally Critical
Controlling access to unmanned infrastructure is also key to perimeter security at sports venues. Consider all the street-level cabinets housing Intelligent Traffic Systems (ITS) controls on surrounding roadways or enclosures for digital signage electronics and fiber optics outside the venue as well as nearby electrical substation control cabinets. All are connected to networks and vital to the safety and operations of a stadium or arena. All are unmanned.

Unauthorized entry not only opens the door to potential vandalism and terrorist acts. It also exposes network switches displaying IP addresses, gateways and subnet masks for anyone to see—an invitation to hack the network and cyber-attacks.

Even though physical access to this critical infrastructure can have an immediate and widespread impact, most cabinets are still secured with a generic physical key that can easily be obtained and duplicated. That’s a serious security threat anywhere. To prevent that possibility, entry into these cabinets needs to be authorized, managed, and monitored in real-time. Thankfully, this can be accomplished with robust solutions that are available for both online and offline access control.

An example of how effective online locks can be is what the city of Atlanta did to remotely monitor and manage who could access traffic cabinets near its premier football stadium. As part of a comprehensive plan to ensure public safety and movement throughout the city during the week leading up to the biggest game of the year, the city found it necessary to provide creative physical and cyber security solutions that extend around the stadium. These included a combination of online integrated cabinet locks and offline intelligent key solutions to secure each door on traffic cabinets within a one-mile radius of the stadium and player hotels.

These solutions continue to provide online access control for real-time monitoring and remote lock/unlock as well as a fast, easy, and affordable way to upgrade traffic cabinets where special wiring, real-time monitoring, and control are not required. City and transportation officials are now better able to instantly manage who has access. They can readily receive alerts when something’s awry and generate audit trails that allow them to know how long cabinets are open and when and who might be on-site, ensuring greater transparency and security.

Access Management Back at the Stadium Itself
Fixed and popup bollards at the Atlanta venue provide vehicle standoff and barriers to protect property and people while anti-climb fences stop intruders from scaling and cutting their way into places where they don’t belong. Both are highly effective deterrents. At the same time, they’re aesthetically designed to meld with the look and feel of the stadium without interfering with the welcoming spirit and excitement of the fan experience.

Access control solutions at the Atlanta stadium stretch from perimeter doors like receiving, loading, player/staff parking entrances, and personnel doors to deeper locations within the facility such as storage, owner/executive suites, server rooms, and more. In fact, our company was involved in providing hardware and access control solutions for literally hundreds of doors at this venue. Most were PoE lock and access installations which were the specified preference for seamless interfacing with the stadium’s network. PoE solutions are also much more energy-efficient and far easier to install than legacy access control solutions.

The Final Score
Securing the vast grounds and facilities of sports venues, access to its entrances (from ground level to rooftop), and streamlining pedestrian flow are all essential to stadium and arena perimeter security game plans. But as the enlightening example in Atlanta demonstrates, securing access to unmanned infrastructure is also critical in light of ever-changing potential threats that can impact systems we never had to worry about before. Keeping up is challenging enough.

Staying a step ahead takes vigilance. It’s a huge responsibility that’s vital to the safety of team members, employees, owners, and fans alike, so everyone can feel secure enough to continue enjoying an exciting sporting event experience as far into the future as possible.

This article originally appeared in the July / August 2022 issue of Security Today.

Featured

  • Accelerating a Pathway

    There is a new trend touting the transformational qualities of AI’s ability to deliver actionable data and predictive analysis that in many instances, seems to be a bit of an overpromise. The reality is that very few solutions in the cyber-physical security (CPS) space live up to this high expectation with the one exception being the new generation of Physical Identity and Access Management (PIAM) software – herein recategorized as PIAM+. Read Now

  • Protecting Your Zones

    It is game day. You can feel the crowd’s energy. In the parking lot. At the gate. In the stadium. On the concourse. Fans are eager to party. Food and merchandise vendors ready themselves for the rush. Read Now

  • Street Smarts

    The ongoing acceptance of AI and advanced data analytics has allowed surveillance camera technology to shift from being a tactical tool to a strategic business solution. Combining traditional surveillance technology with AI-based data-driven insights can streamline transportation systems, enhance traffic management, improve situational awareness, optimize resource allocation and streamline emergency response procedures. Read Now

  • The Progress of Biometrics

  • Next-Gen AI for Smart Cities

    The future of smart city technology is not being shaped in Silicon Valley — it is taking root in Dubuque, Iowa. With a population of about 60,000, this mid-sized city has become a live testbed for AI-driven traffic management thanks to a unique public-private collaboration led by Milestone Systems. Project Hafnia demonstrates how cities can transform urban mobility and safety through Responsible Technology—without costly infrastructure overhauls. Read Now

New Products

  • QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC)

    The latest Qualcomm® Vision Intelligence Platform offers next-generation smart camera IoT solutions to improve safety and security across enterprises, cities and spaces. The Vision Intelligence Platform was expanded in March 2022 with the introduction of the QCS7230 System-on-Chip (SoC), which delivers superior artificial intelligence (AI) inferencing at the edge.

  • AC Nio

    AC Nio

    Aiphone, a leading international manufacturer of intercom, access control, and emergency communication products, has introduced the AC Nio, its access control management software, an important addition to its new line of access control solutions.

  • A8V MIND

    A8V MIND

    Hexagon’s Geosystems presents a portable version of its Accur8vision detection system. A rugged all-in-one solution, the A8V MIND (Mobile Intrusion Detection) is designed to provide flexible protection of critical outdoor infrastructure and objects. Hexagon’s Accur8vision is a volumetric detection system that employs LiDAR technology to safeguard entire areas. Whenever it detects movement in a specified zone, it automatically differentiates a threat from a nonthreat, and immediately notifies security staff if necessary. Person detection is carried out within a radius of 80 meters from this device. Connected remotely via a portable computer device, it enables remote surveillance and does not depend on security staff patrolling the area.