Everybody has a plan and plans change. In the late 1980s, during the last U.S. recession, Ross Perot -- founder Electronic Data Systems and Presidential candidate – told Security Magazine his constant business plan: Keep the things that work; stop doing the things that don’t work; and start a few new things.

With today’s global economic challenges, times are less simple.

Security Magazine visited with a diversity of security leaders with the aim of viewing their playbook concerning business and security strategies, technologies they have just put in place or will implement in anticipation of a tough 2009 and emerging threats that must be addressed. The purpose here is that security executives, like everyone, acquire ideas from their interactions and sharing with one another.

Meryl Rubinstein, assistant superintendent for business operations, and Michael Kollmer, director of technology, both of the Mamaroneck (New York) Public Schools, view business value in unique security technology to make significant forward progress.

The 2009 strategy for Meryl Rubinstein, assistant superintendent for business operations, and Michael Kollmer, director of technology, both of the Mamaroneck (New York) Public Schools, centers on their team’s forward progress, thanks in part to their goal-setting decision to go with unique security video technology that’s more costly per camera but less costly to cover their entire facility.

On their team are Johnson Controls of Milwaukee, Wis., and Sentry 360 of Naperville, Ill. More information on the technology from http://www.sentry360.com.

Chris Horan, who covers New York for Johnson Controls, said that “the school approached us about putting a digital security video system into Mamaroneck High School. With my relationship with Sentry 360, we brought in the technology, gave a presentation and were able to win the job. One benefit of the camera is that we can do PTZ in playback mode, which no other camera that I’m aware of can do in high resolution.”

Added Rubenstein, who sought new technology after a few incidents the closed the high school or caused evacuations, saw value in the integrator’s proposal. “We thought that it was actually a cost effective way…even though each of those cameras costs was more, they covered a greater area and the quality and resolution was so high with the zoom.”

Speaking of the team’s forward progress, Kollmer said, “From a network perspective, we wanted to accomplish two things. One was to make sure that we would not be having a major impact on our traffic in our network, and the second one is to maintain a unified network. In consulting with our network engineers, we created a Virtual LAN setup which enabled us to have centralized control of the entire network and yet keep the traffic flow separated.”

Speaking of the field of play, Johnson Control’s Nicole Michione pointed out that “this school does have a very interesting layout, many different elevations, many different intersections and corridors. And the application with the 360 camera was just really a perfect fit.” Rubinstein added that the intent was not to have someone monitoring the system all the time. “It was more to use it as a deterrent as well as if an incident does happen to be able to go back and see exactly what happened and to see who was involved.”

According to Sentry 360’s Tom Carnevale, the solution will prove in 2009 that this is a perfect example h of a network administrator and an IT administrator understanding the type of technology that’s in front of them and organizing their network in a way that is unobtrusive to the rest of their operation. 40-plus megapixel cameras running on a VLAN network with a major high school. That’s a great illustration of how this type of technology can be used.”