Faced with increased security concerns, especially in light of recent school shootings across the U.S., educators are looking for new ways to improve their campus security systems--and converging physical security tools on their campus computer network is the latest trend they are turning to.

At the Campus Safety Conference in California on Feb. 20, officials from Cisco Systems discussed the importance of converging a school's physical security tools on its network, which they said schools are now doing at an unprecedented pace.

Although campus security is a top priority for school leaders, many schools' physical and network security infrastructures are disjointed, comprising a patchwork of separate alarm systems, surveillance cameras, communication systems, and radios that cannot interact with the digital, network-connected systems more recently put in place.

Brigham Young University (BYU) sought to model its campus security systems on those often found in the corporate world by merging its physical security tools on its computer network. All of BYU's major campus buildings now use physical access cards connected to the network, and the university recently upgraded its analog surveillance cameras to an IP-based surveillance system, so images from the cameras are visible through a network connection. In addition, using Cisco's IP Interoperability Collaboration System (IPICS), BYU merged its campus radio system and its IP-based network.

"Before we modernized our campus safety communications, training used to be a nightmare for our emergency dispatchers, because they literally had to know more than 70 different user interfaces to transmit information," said Steve Goodman, BYU's communications center supervisor. "Now that we're using the network as our communication platform, the dispatch process is streamlined and efficient."

The university already has mass-notification techniques in place, including eMail notification, and is working to install other methods, such as self-subscribing text messages and a system that allows an administrator to take control of all campus telephones and use the speaker function on those phones.

On-campus surveys revealed that the number of students who have cell phones with text capabilities reaches into the mid-90 percent range.

"Most students don't even have land lines anymore," Goodman said. "We understand that those students roll ... over fairly quickly, with students transferring, graduating, and we'll have to entice the students and the community to keep their contact numbers up to date."

As school violence garners national headlines, Goodman said events such as the Virginia Tech shooting last year brought the need for vigilant security methods to the forefront of university officials' minds.

"It's more visible now, and it did help pave the way," Goodman said. "Our university administration has always been very supportive, and now some of these things are more public, and there's a better understanding of it now."