Physical security · Rochester, New York
One security platform, from conception to commissioning
Intrusion, life safety, access control, surveillance, ambush, and environmental monitoring designed as a single system by licensed engineers, all reporting to one UL Central Station.
- Six systems designed as one platform
- Every component electronically tested before handover
- One UL Central Station, with landline and cell backup
- NYS Dept. of State licensed
Most buildings do not have a security system. They have four of them.
Cameras from one company. Card readers from another. The fire alarm from whoever the general contractor happened to use. An intrusion panel somebody's brother in law put in during 2009. Each one works. None of them talk. And when something actually happens, nobody can produce a single account of it, because the account is spread across four systems with four logins and four clocks that disagree.
From conception to commissioning, our team designs a physical security platform tailored to your organization's needs while staying inside your security budget. Our security design group focuses on total security integration, from employee protection through to securing corporate trade secrets. One design, one accountable firm, one signal path.
Integration
What integration actually changes
Integration is a word that gets used loosely. A vendor will tell you two systems are integrated when what they mean is that both of them have an app. Below is what it changes when the integration is designed in from the beginning instead of bolted on two years later by somebody writing middleware.
A badge read, a door held open, a motion trip, and the camera clip covering all three arrive as one record on one clock. Reconstructing that from four separate systems afterward is how a fifteen minute question turns into a two day project.
A denied badge at a back door after hours can call up the camera, notify a person, and flag the event, instead of resting quietly in a log nobody reads. High speed door call up is worth more than a hundred hours of recorded empty corridor.
Our UL Central Station can receive and handle all of your organization's security signals, including landline and cell backup. One station, one set of procedures, one number to call, rather than three vendors each holding a third of the answer.
Doors release on alarm. Notification reaches the correct zones. Shutdowns fire in the right order. Every one of those is an interface between two systems, and interfaces are precisely where separately purchased equipment quietly fails.
When something does not work there is one firm responsible. That sounds like a small administrative nicety until you have spent a month refereeing between a camera vendor, a door hardware supplier, and your own network team.
Our technicians perform rigorous electronic testing on every component we install, to confirm it performs as specified. Commissioning is a phase with a deliverable attached, not a handshake on the way out of the building.
The platform
Six systems, designed together
Intrusion
UL certified equipment. Motion detection, tamper proof devices, and backup power supervision, all reporting to our UL certified Central Station.
Intrusion detectionLife Safety
UL smoke, heat, and flame detection. Pull stations, horn strobes, and central headend control. Mass emergency notification. Certified technicians for any fire system, for a complete takeover. 24 hour service.
Fire alarm design and inspectionAccess Control
Facial recognition, biometrics, and prox or prox and PIN formats. Unlimited user database with user friendly software. Tamperproof peripheral devices.
Access control and badgingSurveillance
IP and digital camera systems, fixed and PTZ, off site monitoring, and high speed door call up, with images clear enough to be worth reviewing.
Video surveillanceAmbush and panic
360 degree surveillance, ambush monitors, and panic alarms for the people most exposed: reception, cash handling, late shifts, and anybody who works alone.
Environmental
Computer and clean room monitoring for water, temperature, and power, with UPS backup. The system that protects the assets a burglar was never going to be able to carry out.
Conception to commissioning
Five phases, and commissioning is a phase, not a handshake
Most of what goes wrong with a security platform was decided in phase two and discovered in phase five. Running all of it under one design keeps those two phases talking to each other.
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01
Assessment
We walk the site, look at what you already own and what condition it is genuinely in, and put the risks in writing before anybody proposes equipment.
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02
Design
Our licensed engineers design the platform across every system at once, so the interfaces between them are drawn rather than assumed. This is also where the budget conversation is honest.
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03
Installation
One team installing across all six domains, sequenced against your operations and the other trades, with the signal paths built the way they were drawn.
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04
Commissioning and electronic testing
Our technicians perform rigorous electronic testing on every component we install, to confirm it performs as specified. Cross system behaviour gets tested too, because that is where it usually is not.
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05
Monitoring and support
Signals land at our UL Central Station with landline and cell backup, and there is one number to call when anything on the platform needs attention.
The loss that has nothing to do with a burglar
Environmental monitoring for computer and clean rooms
A pipe fitting failing above a server rack does not trip a motion detector. A condenser dying over a holiday weekend does not set off a door contact. In this region, full of optics and photonics companies with rooms whose contents are worth more than the building around them, the most expensive night a company has is frequently a night when nobody broke in at all.
We monitor water, temperature, and power in computer rooms and clean rooms, with UPS backup, and we route those signals to the same UL Central Station that handles your intrusion and fire. Somebody is watching at three in the morning either way. This simply means they are also watching the thing that is statistically far more likely to go wrong.
- Water detection under raised floors and near piping
- Temperature thresholds, including rate of rise
- Power loss, phase condition, and UPS state
- Clean room conditions monitored continuously
- Signals to the same Central Station as fire and intrusion
- UPS backup, so the monitoring survives what it monitors
For the people most exposed
Ambush monitors and panic alarms
Some roles carry a risk that none of the building's other systems address. Reception staff alone with whoever walks in. Cash handling. Late shifts. Lone workers in remote parts of a site. Pharmacies and medication rooms. A door contact does not help any of them.
Ambush monitoring and panic alarms exist for that specific moment, with 360 degree surveillance where the position warrants it, and a signal path that reaches a staffed Central Station rather than a colleague's phone that may well be face down on a desk.
Placed where somebody can reach them without reaching, at reception desks, tellers, dispensing windows, and anywhere a counter separates staff from the public.
A code that disarms the system while quietly telling the Central Station it was entered under coercion. The person standing in front of your employee sees compliance. The station sees the truth.
For staff working alone in remote areas of a site or outside normal hours, where the gap between something going wrong and anybody noticing is measured in hours.
At exposed positions, so an incident produces usable footage from every direction rather than the back of somebody's head walking out of frame.
If you are not sure where to start
What a GSMG security assessment covers
A good many of the organizations we work with do not arrive with a scope. They arrive with a feeling that something is not right, or with an insurer, an auditor, or a board member who asked a question nobody in the room could answer. An assessment turns that into a document you can act on or budget against.
How somebody gets from the street to your front door, and from your front door to the parts of the building that matter. Lighting, sightlines, parking, and the routes nobody thinks of as routes.
Every opening, including the ones held open by a wedge every morning, and how people actually move once they are inside as opposed to how the floor plan says they do.
What is installed, what still functions, what is monitored, and what has quietly stopped working. A surprising amount of installed equipment is decorative by the time we find it.
Server and clean rooms, R&D space, records, medication, cash handling, and anywhere holding something the organization would genuinely struggle to replace.
Who has keys and credentials, who is exposed, what happens when an alarm goes off at two in the morning, and whether anybody has tested that answer recently.
In writing, separated into what should be fixed now, what belongs in next year's capital budget, and what somebody sold you that you do not need.
Why GSMG
One firm, six systems, and nobody to point at
Licensed engineers design the platform
All of our engineers are New York State licensed Professional Engineers, working across intrusion, life safety, access control, surveillance, and building automation. Design starts from your risk rather than from a product catalogue.
Our own UL Central Station
It can receive and handle all of your organization's security signals, including landline and cell backup. Every domain on this page reports to the same place, staffed by the same team.
Tested, not assumed
Our technicians perform rigorous electronic testing on every component we install to confirm it performs as specified, and we test the behaviour between systems as well as within them.
From employee protection to trade secrets
Our security design group covers the full range, and our people have run security programs from the government side. Working since 2011 on buildings from a single floor to over a million square feet.
Common questions
Before you call
We are not sure what we need. Where do we start?
With an assessment, which is the normal starting point rather than an admission of anything. We walk the site, look at what you already own, and put the risks and the options in writing in priority order. Plenty of organizations arrive here because somebody asked a question they could not answer, and that is a perfectly good reason to call.
Do we have to replace everything we already own?
Usually not, and we will tell you honestly which parts are worth keeping. Some equipment is perfectly serviceable and simply badly configured or unmonitored. Some was obsolete when it was installed. The assessment separates the two, and a phased plan that fixes the worst first is often more useful than a rip and replace nobody can fund.
Can you integrate with systems from other manufacturers?
Often yes, and how well depends on what you have. Some platforms integrate cleanly, some integrate through workarounds that are fragile, and a few genuinely do not. We will tell you which category yours falls into before you spend money on it, because discovering it afterward is the most common way integration projects go wrong.
Is this one contract or several?
One, covering whichever domains you want. That is most of the point. A single design, a single installation team, a single commissioning phase, and one Central Station receiving every signal, which means there is exactly one firm accountable when something needs attention.
What is environmental monitoring, and do we need it?
It watches water, temperature, and power in rooms where those things cause expensive damage: server rooms, clean rooms, labs, and anywhere with equipment that does not tolerate a bad weekend. Whether you need it comes down to a simple question. If the room flooded on a Saturday, how long before anybody found out? If the answer is Monday, you need it.
How do panic and ambush alarms actually work?
A panic station sends a silent signal to the Central Station when pressed. A duress or ambush code does the same thing while appearing to disarm the system normally, so the person applying the pressure sees what they expect to see. In both cases the signal reaches staffed monitoring with your escalation procedure attached, rather than a notification on somebody's phone.
Do all of these systems have to be monitored by you?
No, though it is the arrangement we would recommend and the one that makes the integration worth having. Our UL Central Station can receive and handle all of your organization's security signals with landline and cell backup. Where you already have monitoring you are happy with, we will design around it and say so plainly.
Start with the assessment
You do not need a scope, a budget, or a clear idea of what is wrong. A walk through the building and an honest document at the end of it is a reasonable first step, and it costs nothing.