Force5
Force 5:Reducing Human Risk for Power Utilities

“Policies and frameworks scripted to protect critical assets remain ineffective unless a robust control is in place to enforce them,” says James Evelyn, EVP of compliance solutions at Force 5. This holds true in the power utility industry, where NERC mandates the appropriate implementation of the critical infrastructure protection (CIP) standards. Unfortunately, manual, or antiquated controls often relied upon leave critical assets vulnerable to human risks, inefficient processes, and ultimately costly violations that could’ve been easily avoided.

Force 5 is ideally positioned to mitigate these challenges with its time-tested and innovative enterprise product design to protect critical assets of the power utility industry. The product is in production at large and small power utilities across North America.

Force 5's flagship product, Gatekeeper, is a robust platform for power utilities to consolidate and automate the enforcement of physical-entry requirements in every facility. Gatekeeper enables clients to elevate their risk-averse, compliance-based stance with a proven, audit ready solution for contractors and visitors. With this state-of-the-art solution, clients can validate escorts and vet unauthorized personnel in critical spaces, ensuring critical asset protection at all times across transmission and generation sites, control rooms and even corporate lobbies. Gatekeeper is also recognized for its ability to provide audit-ready evidence in a click, constant situational awareness, and continuous risk assessment.

“Our mission is to help power utilities reduce human risk in critical spaces, specifically around unauthorized entry,” states Evelyn.

Force 5 remains true to its mission by leveraging a unique blend of hardware-software solutions to ensure Gatekeeper’s consistent performance, regardless of the environment, use case, location, or user type. The platform delivers escort-driven or self-service workflow kiosks and traditional guard-assisted visitor management workflows to vette visitors and enforce business rules to safely and securely log visits that are compliant with corporate rules and regulatory standards. The combination of a powerful matching engine with biometrics and facial recognition capabilities enables it to check individuals’ names against various watch/do-not-admit lists and identify personnel even if they try to enter under an alias.
Unlike manual, error-prone visitor logs with limited capabilities, Gatekeeper is designed to give in-depth, actionable insight regarding the identity, purpose, and eligibility of personnel entering the facility. Captured data is usually archived for reporting, forensics, and analytics. The platform provides situational awareness through dashboards where users can view all visit and visitor information, send events to access control monitoring software, and leverage emails, texts, and voice notifications regarding all aspects of a visit.

Gatekeeper is the only visitor management system built specifically for CIP standards, allowing power utilities to demonstrate compliance at any time. The platform's capabilities also extend to providing complete history and audit trails around the escort/visitor program, including key access. Gatekeeper houses internal control features to enforce corporate policies, including health screenings and attestations. It produces compliance-based evidence and forensics needed for real-time risk analysis and audit-ready reporting, helping power utilities achieve and maintain compliance without exposing them to operational risks.

Since power utility environments range from climate-controlled offices to industrial facilities and security gates, Force 5 has structured its solutions to incorporate industrial-grade hardware and a robust architecture to handle connectivity issues. This capability enables a distributed implementation where local systems sync back to an archival server, ensuring availability at all times. It can also integrate with different devices and systems of record—like safety training databases—to enhance access control at entry points. For instance, Force 5 can help power utilities evaluate whether personnel accessing critical facilities in a substation or a control room have taken the safety training or orientation needed to visit there.

Our mission is to help power utilities reduce human risk in critical spaces, specifically around unauthorized entry

As a staunch advocate of continuous innovation, Force 5 collaborates with clients to build upon the solution and meet new use cases and standards without additional costs ensuring the platform remains current and expansive.
“If we don’t have a solution that meets a particular need, we’ll develop a solution that fits—because we’re innovators. Our innovation stems from solving specific customer challenges from end to end," says Evelyn.

Force 5 has a proven track record of over 20 years of solving client problems through its technology solutions. Clients adopting this suite of solutions have witnessed substantial improvements in visitor management programs and regulatory adherence. Force 5 always keeps client feedback at the heart of its product development, and customer input heavily influences its roadmap. Moving ahead, the company continues to take long strides in developing novel solutions to integrate different types of wearable technologies to further boost situational awareness and personnel location regardless of their environment.