Macquarie Uni deploys crisis communications platform

Macquarie University has rolled out a crisis communications platform from BlackBerry’s AtHoc division at its Sydney campus.

The AtHoc Networked Crisis Communications platform will be used to keep staff and students safe in the event of an incident.

The platform is designed to allow people and organisations to exchange critical information in real time during emergency and business continuity situations.

A network of connected endpoints — including desktops, mobile devices running Android and iOS, sirens and other emergency systems — can be used to facilitate situational awareness and collaboration.

Macquarie has adopted the platform to ensure its campus of 40,000 students and staff was incident-ready and to provide a way to alert people to specific events such as fire alarms or chemical skills.

“We wanted to be crisis-ready and have a robust mass notification system in place,” Macquarie campus security manager for property John Durbridge said.

“Although we approached several overseas and local companies, we were most impressed with AtHoc’s security credentials with the US Defense Force and the solution’s ability to tick all the boxes in our wish list.”

BlackBerry acquired AtHoc in September last year and is operating it as a division of the company. The deal formed part of a series of security-related acquisitions for the company over the last 18 months, including Secusmat, WatchDox and security consultancy Encription.

The company has also announced plans to add AtHoc’s platform to the Microsoft Azure Marketplace over the next few months.

Image courtesy of Catherine under CC