Case Study - ORNL Credit Union

Galaxy Control Systems Improves Management of
Access Activities for ORNL Federal Credit Union

Customer

ORNL Federal Credit Union is a financial institution serving the public in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. It received its charter in 1948 as the Oak Ridge National Laboratory Employees Federal Credit Union (ORNL FCU) to provide stability and a financial safe haven for those who worked at ORNL. Today, the community credit union’s 32 branches provide financial services available to businesses and anyone who lives, works, worships or attends school in the 16 counties of Central East Tennessee.

Challenge

As ORNL FCU continued to grow in size and number of locations, it needed to expand its access control measures beyond its existing central station alarm monitoring system. Employees used physical keys to access certain areas while other areas in the branches and head office had no restrictions at all. Creating activity reports and accommodating and tracking personnel movement among branches was difficult as well as time consuming. Improved management of these activities was a primary goal for management.

Solution

The search for the right solution ultimately brought ORNL FCU to Galaxy Control Systems. An initial system was installed in the head office and based on its ease of use, System Galaxy was also installed in the main branch to control access to teller lines. Whereas previously employees had utilized physical keys to enter the teller area, now they use their employee ID badges for access.

System Galaxy was then installed at the rest of the 32 branches and additional use of the system allowed employees to also use their ID badges for building access. Employees enter the branches before opening hours through a single side door using their access cards. An audit trail is available to provide information to management about who utilized which door and at what time.

ORNL FCU creates all of its employee badges through System Galaxy, including the ORNL FCU logo, the employee’s picture and their information. If an individual is on vacation or out of the office for any reason and is being covered by another employee, corporate management can easily change that employee’s card profile to have access credentials for the branch he or she will be covering.

According to Nancy Ballard, Physical Security Administrator, ORNL FCU, this is one of the biggest advantages of System Galaxy.

She says, “Using a software-based solution for access control badging has made my job easier. It’s just so simple to go in and add someone or to de-activate a badge. I’ve had employees who used to be afraid to tell me that they couldn’t find their badge – but now it’s no problem; I just tell them I can deactivate the lost badge and reactivate it when they find it and they’ll be good to go. Also, when our HR department gets a new group of employees in, they send me their names and I take their photos and get it into the system and make their badges.”

The system is capable of generating many different reports at many different levels, including a report for the actual badging process.

“We can see any changes to badges, whether it’s a new badge, deactivating a badge, adding access, or taking away access,” said Ballard. “I can also pull activity reports for the audit department on individual users.”

Additional locations are planned in the future for the credit union and the plan is to stay with Galaxy Control Systems.

“I haven’t found anything that I don’t like about the Galaxy system,” concluded Ballard. “We recently went through an update that made it even better as far as ease of use. It’s really user friendly.”