Securing Water Facilities
Securing Water Facilities
After 9-11, the Federal 
Government required every major city’s utilities provider to undertake a utility-wide assessment to identify critical assets and their vulnerability.
Most utilities have found their inability to monitor and control access to remote sites a threat. Watersheds, pump stations, tanks, hatches, man vaults, SCADA rooms, chemical feed, and explosive storages require higher security that mechanical keys and locks simply cannot provide.
Tracking hundreds of mechanical keys, and spending thousands of dollars each time someone loses a key ring becomes a real pain and very costly.
Unfortunately the cost to roll out access control has been a barrier for many utilities. Traditional card reader based solutions require expensive and complex wiring and network infrastructure that are cost prohibitive to most water operators .
iCrescendo is privileged to work with many utilities to protect drinking water for their millions of customers. With CyberLock, every lock can be secured without the need to wire the lock. This in itself cuts the cost to deploy access control, and in many cases enables the utilities to expand their access control footprint to much larger area: gates, storage units, utility sheds, cabinets, containers, etc.
Utilities Companies use CyberLock to meet the following objectives:
- Compliance – bring critical infrastructures to comply with Federal and DOH Standards
- Budget – CyberLock cuts cost to comply and increases operational efficiency
- Key Control – CyberKey cannot be duplicated; minimizes number of keys issued
- Lost or stolen key – remove access quickly without having to re-key
- Vandalism – protect locks from being picked or vandalized
- Incident Reporting – gather evidence when incidents occurred
- Business Continuity – ensure systems remain functional during power outage
- Access Control – establish accountability and control access based on privileges
- Interoperability – protect existing investment by integrating legacy systems
iCrescendo can help you comply by easily converting existing mechanical locks into an access control system. With electronic lock cylinders, programmable CyberKeys, and CyberAudit-Web Enterprise software, you can create a powerful system that tracks and controls access to every lock in your facility.
Click here to view a short video presentation.
A 16-page CyberLock catalog is also available for download here.
Securing Drinking Water
Protecting A City’s Drinking Water Supply
Challenge: Securing a Watershed’s Critical Assets
After 9-11, the Federal Government required a major city’s utilities provider to undertake a utility-wide assessment to identify critical assets. The assessment revealed the watershed’s protection in place needed some improvement. The watershed protection manager, says, “We needed to track and electronically document traffic in and out of our facilities and watershed areas.” The drinking water supply from a nearby river is unfiltered so the watershed is completely closed to the public. No trespass of any kind is allowed. The utilities provider was tasked with meeting Federal Critical Infrastructure Guidelines for municipal water supplies. With over 30 gate entrances to the river alone, this presented unique challenges.
Safe and Secure Water
Problem: Protecting AFC's area water
The Atlanta-Fulton County Water Treatment Facility located in Alpharetta, Georgia is one of the largest in the state. The facility is operated by USFilter, which manages more than 550 water and wastewater treatment facilities throughout the United States.
Water treatment facilities are unique in that they have diverse access control requirements that include main entrances and office doors, as well as storage areas, padlocks, gates, computer cabinets that house the control system for the plant, and chemical feed areas.
The company selected CyberLock shortly after 9/11 to replace the facility's mechanical lock system and implement the new, advanced locking system facility-wide.