Safe & Secure

Sep 15, 2001 12:00 PM, By Mary Corcoran, Staff Writer

When a homeless family moves into your site, you know it’s time for a security upgrade.

Site security seems like a simple concept. Put up a fence with a padlock, lock the cabinets and relax. But in the years leading to thousands of sites across the country, security issues have changed.

It used to be that the most basic security features worked to keep tower and antenna sites safe from vandals armed with cans of spray paint or crow bars. Now, though, carriers are becoming as concerned with knowing who goes in as they are with keeping people out.

Consequently, electronic locks with tracking systems are starting to become the industry standard, despite their higher cost. Although electronic lock companies agree their systems cost more than $10 padlocks, none would give specific costs, explaining that price is dependent on how many systems, accessories or components the carrier needs.

Many say the benefits of an electronic system offset the cost. Verizon (www.verizon.com) has gone to electronic tracking locks at its sites for several reasons.

“They’re a better deterrent,” said Scott Thompson, Verizon Las Vegas network operations director. “With the old padlock, anyone could buy a pair of bolt cutters and get in. At least this way we’ve got some sort of technological deterrent. We spent a pretty good chunk of change to install it, but we’re going to get our money’s worth in the long run.”

Electronic locks require electronic keys that can be changed or made useless by a central computer. Depending on the system, the key can be a plastic card that workers scan, a password they enter into a system or a combination.v If workers quit, their keys can be programmed out of the system. The keys also can be programmed to work for only a certain time, such as for a vendor that comes in for one day.

Bill Casto, Cellular 2000 (www.cell-2000.com) general manager, agreed that electronic locks are worth the extra money.

“It’s kind of like using a Pentium 1Gb processor versus a 486,” he said. “You get what you pay for.”

Casto wouldn’t go back to mechanical locks. He said that it’s easy to duplicate keys, so carriers never have any control.

Traditional locks and keys also don’t offer the ability to track entrances and exits. They don’t show who’s been there, said Stan Earnshaw, Supra Products (www.supra-products.com) commercial division vice president.

“In the security industry, there are two sides: Access control and security,” Earnshaw said.

Access control is overtaking basic security needs quickly, agreed Ray Desrochers, Keyware (www.keyware.com) vice president of marketing. Carriers want to know who entered, when they entered and why they entered, he said.

Access-control software and electronic locks are important, but maintenance matters, too.

“If you don’t maintain a building, it becomes condemned and can fall down,” said Matt Doyle, Trinity Wireless Towers (www.trintel.com) executive vice president. “A site runs the same way. There are ramifications of not taking care of a site.”

Doyle said his company, as a site landlord, hears from carriers about maintenance concerns regularly. The most common issues are monitoring lights, clearing access roads and controlling weeds.

Maintenance problems such as these can contribute to major security woes. If lights are out, you can’t distinguish what security cameras are recording. If access roads aren’t cleared, police can’t get to a site when an alarm sounds. If grass isn’t mowed, burglars can hide in it.

For years, wireless carriers were focused on the build-out of their networks, but now they have to go back and rework their sub-par sites. According to Doyle, sites were thrown up quickly without future planning involved.

“Nowadays, when we’re building towers, we build knowing that we’re going to want to co-locate people, knowing that we have to make them stronger, so we don’t have to come back later and put beefier parts on them or tear them down entirely to put something new up,” he said.

With today’s slowing economy, build-out has taken second stage to maintenance for many carriers.

Lara Altschul, VoiceStream national director of government affairs (www.voicestream.com), said her company inspects sites routinely to avoid security problems.

“We keep a pretty close eye on our site,” she said. “Hopefully, if there were a security breach due to a maintenance incident, we would catch it quickly.”

Verizon’s Thompson said his company does similar inspections.

“We hire contractors to do tower inspections and make sure our coaxes are running properly,” he said. “(They also) make sure we don’t have any bullet holes at the top or any lightning strikes and that all the nuts and bolts are tightened.”

Bullet holes have a special meaning to Thompson, who showcases sections of damaged cable in his office as souvenirs.

“We had one site in our North Las Vegas area that took a couple bullet holes through our coax,” he said. “You wouldn’t think that that would go on because it was right in the middle of town.”

Location, Location, Location
Site location can have as much to do with security issues as anything else. Rural, remote sites can draw bored vandals. City sites can be less prone to attack because people are wary of passers-by and quick response from authorities.

Still, VoiceStream’s Altschul said her company sometimes has problems with securing city sites because zoning authorities often are more concerned about appearance than theft prevention.

“Some jurisdictions put a higher priority on a site looking pretty versus allowing us to build a secure site,” she said. “Barbed wire is not pretty, but there are other materials that would achieve almost the same end.”

City-friendly security solutions include disguised features and retaining walls instead of protective fencing.

“You can use brute-force approaches toward security in the way of pre-cast concrete shelters and barbed wire,” said Steve Ishihara, Flextronics Enclosure Systems vice president of network services (www.flextronics.com/enclosure). “Or, you can use stealth to minimize the attractiveness in terms of vandalism and damage.”

If they can’t see it, vandals are less likely to attack it.

Thompson said his rural sites are becoming urbanized as the city encroaches on the desert.

“Sometimes we’ll get homeless people that will move into an area and use our site for awhile,” he said. “They get in there and make a little home.”

Both remote locations and city sites have their own security problems, so carriers usually try to secure them equally. Cellular 2000’s Casto said his company learned the hard way not to trust just a fence, even in remote areas of Minnesota.

“We’ve had people with wire cutters chop through fencing with barbed wire on top to steal copper cabling that’s sitting in there,” he said. “Now you hide that stuff.”

Although high-tech security devices are expensive, carriers always are on the lookout for new security features that would be worth the investment.

“If you think about it, these sites aren’t cheap,” Casto said. “If you have a quarter-million to 400,000 bucks sitting at a site, what’s $20,000?”

Security companies are aware that carriers are willing to spend the money to protect their equipment and are working hard to build a better mousetrap. Soon, today’s electronic locks may give way to Mission-Impossible-type biometric security, but right now the cost still is prohibitive. “We’re always interested in (new security features),” Thompson said. “It’s just whether we can get the company to buy off on it. The money factor is always the big thing.”

Locking Alternatives
Mechanical Locks: Require all employees to have the same keys or combination. No tracking ability. Must change lock to fix security breach.

Push-Button Locks: Require pass code to enter. Some have tracking ability. Can program codes out.

Electronic Locks: Require pass code to enter. Most have tracking ability. Can program individual codes out.

Card-Access Locks: Require employee card to be scanned. Have tracking ability. Can program individual cards out.