When the University began building its new Cybersecurity Education Center in the autumn of 2010, staff knew the facilities would be much more than just a classroom and that there would be a lot of expensive equipment onsite. Also as time went on, more and more visitors would be utilising the facilities, in addition to the adult students. “Clearly, we had to have enhanced control over the doors at the centre and who was coming into and out of the classrooms and meeting rooms,” explained Dan Likarish, Director of the Center on Information Assurance Studies at Regis University.

The University’s Facilities Manager recommended that Dan and his colleagues speak with Security Install Solutions. Rueben Orr with SIS provided them with a demonstration of the Brivo access control technology. “It was at this time,” Likarish recalled, “that I realised not only could we use the Brivo system to improve our building security but it represented a teaching opportunity, too.”

Regis’ campus at the Denver Technology Center is a public access facility, located adjacent to a major highway and accessible by light rail. Easy access also means that anyone can be walking around the campus. In addition, the Center has made a substantial investment in the equipment they provide in their classrooms and labs. The Center caters to an adult student body so classes are held at night, which compounds security challenges.

“With Brivo, we have what I call constant vigilance monitoring and that reduces our worry factor,” said Likarish. “Add to this that our students get the practical experience of working with this system in a higher security environment and that’s a positive experience all around.” All students earning their master’s degree in information assurance do a walk-through of the University’s security systems and that’s when they are introduced to Brivo ACS Webservice. “Utilising the Brivo system, we demonstrate the one, two, and three factor combinations of identification—card, biometrics or fingerprint reader, and PIN.”

Likarish continued, “Physical security is part of our curriculum, so we used our Brivo system to turn it into a lab exercise. We explore not only the physical devices, but also what happens in the event of a power failure, what is the door device to webserver connection, why use PoE, what is the support and maintenance model, and many other aspects.”

Another purpose for the Center is to provide education for first responders at the tribal, local, state, and federal levels (the FBI, FEMA, and Interior are future, prospective customers). So, the University has many different groups coming through and recently was preparing to receive 70 new visitors in just a few days. “The Brivo system gives us the flexibility to control our rooms for our many different needs, and those needs are only going to expand as we receive more and more visitors, hold trainings and cyber competitions, and so on. Brivo’s ease of use in managing these situations really sold us on the system,” said Likarish.

Likarish and his staff manage all the students’ access to the facilities, as well as other staff and their many visitors. They utilise the system’s alert features to stay on top of events like loss of power, forced door entry, unidentified or unscheduled card usage, and others. “The system is reliable, scalable, redundant, and it’s easy to use.”

“The Brivo system has met and exceeded our expectations,” reported Likarish. "Once the system was in and we established a baseline, we’ve found it even better than we thought it would be.”