The GTAA had a number of disparate physical security systems that didn’t talk to one another. So it rolled out a software suite for identity management and access control systems, which manages security identities, compliance and events across these disparate systems.

“It’s so fast-moving, how do you manage that access control without making any mistakes, without relying on a human being?” says Ajay Jain, CEO of San Jose, Calif.-based Quantum Secure, which offers an integrated policy platform for all underlying subsystems in a physical security infrastructure, from identity management to enterprise resource planning — just what the GTAA was looking for.

The lineups and processing time at the PPCO had increased beyond acceptable levels ”“ it was taking 560 minutes to process one pass/permit request. The reason? It was using an in-house system that was cobbled together by various contractors over a number of years, which was limited in scope and had come to the end of its life.

“We were using a home-built inventory system along with a large number of other systems, so we had six or seven systems we were managing with individual data in each system,” said Bryan Scott, senior manager of security infrastructures with the GTAA.

Scott was looking to transform this system of siloed applications that shared common and related information into a single overall management system, automating all manual processes and streamlining operations, to cut down the time required to process access cards, identity cards and pass/permits.

It was also looking for a system that would address the next 10 to 15 years of growth at Toronto Pearson, and move it toward more of an automated compliance-related framework while decreasing the cost of operations.
Through an open tendering process, it chose a proposal from Deloitte & Touche Canada using Quantum Secure’s SAFE technology.