Education Market
Career Education Corporation
Career Education Corporation
231 N. Martingale Rd.
Schaumburg, IL 60173
Career Education Corporation (CEC) offers high-quality
education to more than 90,000 students throughout the
United States, France, Italy, United Kingdom and the
Principality of Monaco. With more than 90 campuses, CEC’s
institutions – such as Le Cordon Bleu and Colorado
Technical University (CTU) – offer associate, Bachelor’s,
Master’s and Doctoral degrees in the career-oriented
disciplines of visual communication and design,
information technology, business studies, culinary arts and
health care. CEC is committed to sharing knowledge and
providing a positive, quality learning experience for its
employees, students and campus community, while
delivering a high level of security.
CEC has always been committed to the safety and security
of its students, staff and employees at all of its campus and
office locations. The IT Department initially maintained
surveillance systems until such time it was decided to
reorganize and place the physical security and video
surveillance systems under the management of the
Director of Security. As CEC relocated to a new
headquarters facility in Schaumburg, Illinois an
opportunity to modernize and standardize the entire
organization’s security emerged through the new state of
the art security center in the building.
Maron Electric Company worked with CEC to select a new
surveillance system. CEC sought a solution to use its
existing infrastructure that was built decades ago without
having to buy an entirely new security system for each
campus. The company’s security team tried several of the
surveillance systems that its schools already had in place
and then spoke with several exacqVision users, who all
agreed Exacq offered the most cost-effective and
user-friendly solution.
CEC is headquartered in Schaumburg, Illinois where the security
department centrally manages the surveillance of all 90 campuses.
“exacqVision hybrid camera servers made it
possible for CEC to utilize the existing
infrastructure and analog cameras, saving CEC a
great deal of time and money.”
Axis IP cameras monitor the parking lots of the CEC headquarters and
each campus.
“Within one year, we were able to modernize our
security into a cutting edge, centralized surveillance
system,” said Phillip Galloway, G4S Secure Solutions,
which provides security staffing services to CEC.
“exacqVision hybrid camera servers made it possible for
CEC to use its existing infrastructure and analog
cameras, saving CEC a great deal of time and money.”
Currently, CEC has 38 exacqVision A-Series 2U IP
camera servers and hybrid servers installed throughout
the United States. Each of the exacqVision servers came
pre-installed with exacqVision Professional VMS
software. exacqVision hybrid servers permit CEC to use
its existing analog cameras while providing the ability
to add new IP cameras.
More than 1,500 analog and IP cameras provide
extensive coverage for security personnel to monitor
the parking lots, entrances, exits, classrooms and other
key traffic areas of each campus and office, including
CEC’s Campus Support Center headquarters.
Since CEC now has most of their schools running on
exacqVision servers and exacqVision Professional VMS
software, all cameras can be viewed from
headquarters. In the command center, CEC Security
Director Bob Kowalski and his security staff can
monitor all campuses at any time.
Security Director, Robert Kowalski, monitors all camera views
through the command center.
According to Kowalski, easily managing the day-to-day
security operations from the command center in the
headquarters significantly reduced his time and the
security officers necessary at each school. Each school
selects someone on the campus staff who is trained on
the system. The exacqVision VMS software has proved
so user-friendly and intuitive, campus presidents and
other staff members are able to easily use the system
without a need for additional IT personnel and
significant training.
CEC headquarters security command center can
virtually patrol all campuses and situations. Most
recently, exacqVision enabled CEC to remotely monitor
the Colorado Springs campus of CTU, which was on the
edge of the evacuation line for wildfires in June 2012.
exacqVision VMS software enables CEC headquarters to monitor the wildfire Security personnel at the Campus Support Center
situation in Colorado at one of their campuses.
were able to monitor the closed campus from more
than 1,000 miles away. As the fires spread closer to the
perimeter of the campus, security staff in the CEC headquarters were able to determine when to evacuate the campus
to ensure employees reached safety. Additionally, with exacqVision VMS in the command center they can keep an eye
on the assets and property in the event of a burglary while it is evacuated. “We would not have had the capability to
oversee this situation if we did not have the exacqVision surveillance system,” said Kowalski.
CEC has more than 1,000 door alarms set up within the exacqVision VMS software. Any time an alarm is triggered, the
security staff member on duty at the Campus Support Center can use the exacqReplay function to quickly review the video.
By simply right-clicking the video panel, the VMS will replay the past 5 seconds to 15 minutes of the video. This enables
security personnel to quickly assess the situation and verify if it is a true security issue, reducing false alarms.
With more than 1,500 cameras in their surveillance system, it is an important benefit to CEC that the exacqVision surveillance
system allows them to easily replace cameras without the need for a new license key from the manufacturer. An exacqVision
system is licensed based on the MAC address of the network interface card, or NIC, of each server and not the MAC
addresses of every camera. As a result, when a New York City CEC health campus with heavy camera use recently
experienced an issue with an IP camera, they were able to quickly replace it without any down time.
CEC also uses the software as an investigative tool. By using the exacqVision Professional VMS thumbnail search capability,
security personnel can search the timeframe of when an incident occurred to find video of the event within minutes. For
example, when a suspected theft occurs within a classroom, CEC security personnel can quickly scan video from the
timeframe and find the incident and determine what happened. In addition, CEC can oversee all contractor projects
occurring on campuses from its headquarters. Once CEC has a clip captured of indisputable evidence that needs to be
shared with the police or the human resources department, security staff can quickly save and email a video clip of the
incident. “Most of the time we have the video evidence to the police before they even get back to the station to file the
report,” Galloway said. “This is an incredible benefit we didn’t have just two years ago.”
The installation of the exacqVision surveillance system has benefited CEC by increasing the protection of students,
professors and campus visitors. The advanced capabilities exacqVision VMS provides has allowed the organization to greatly
improve its security department productivity.
Equipment-At-a-Glance
Software:
• exacqVision Professional VMS software
Hardware:
• 38 exacqVision A-Series IP camera servers and hybrid servers
• 1,000+ analog cameras
• 500 Axis and Arecont Vision IP cameras
• 1 Axis 4-channel encoder
CEC monitors the Colorado Technical University Denver campus from the
command center.
Purpose/Benefits:
• Protect employees, students and the
entire campus community
• Reduce crime and identify incidents
Meet the Integrator
www.maronelectric.com
847-626-6500
Since 1926, the Maron Electric Company has installed telecommunications and security
systems in the Midwest. Their technical expertise has provided high-quality solutions
for hotels, conference centers, office towers and academic campuses. Maron Electric
Company is one of the largest telecommunications companies in Chicago.
“exacqVision brings our service and operations center to the forefront of
technology. We’re saving money while delivering a higher level of safety and
security for our students, faculty and staff.”
Robert Kowalski
Security Director
Career Education Corporation