Gallagher Controller 7000 Enhanced And High Sec Controller 7000

Gallagher Controller 7000 Enhanced And High Sec Controller 7000 Offer More Power For High Security Customers.

Gallagher Controller 7000 Enhanced and High Sec Controller 7000 — Gallagher Security will be showing its new Controller 7000 Enhanced and the soon-to-be released High Sec Controller 7000 at SAGE 2024 in Canberra, November 21. To whet our readers’ appetites, SEN editor John Adams sat down with the Gallagher team to discover one of SAGE’s pivotal product releases.

Above Audio from Gallagher Tech-Talk: Controller 7000: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODOyj8q08Ec

SEN’s first glimpse of Gallagher’s Controller 7000 Enhanced and High Sec Controller 7000 was at Integrate & Security in Sydney this August. We were surprised to find not 1, but 2 new variations of one of the world’s leading access control panels had landed less than a year after the release of the award-winning Controller 7000 (C7000).

On further reflection, we decided that the nature of the Controller 7000 Standard, which was engineered to evolve in near real-time thanks to its powerful new processors and RAM, meant the amped-up cadence of releases should have been expected.

Before chatting with Gallagher’s Jim Rayner, Ellyse Walker and Dean Matheson, I had a loose expectation I’d be discovering entirely different controllers with very specific sets of functionalities, but I stood to be corrected.  

Instead, the Controller 7000 Enhanced and High Sec Controller 7000 incorporate all the core functions of the Controller 7000 Standard while expanding them in key areas to meet the needs of clients requiring greater redundancy and enhanced cybersecurity.

Leading what was part demonstration and part deep technological history lesson was Gallagher’s Jim Rayner, whose combination of operational focus and technical nous made him the perfect guide.

Rayner has a deep history with Gallagher. He joined Gallagher nearly 20 years ago from Hamilton City Council, where he had the specific remit of – to be the voice of the end user within the company. It’s a compelling role that has placed Rayner at the pointy end of Gallagher’s product development for decades, covering hardware, software, and communications.

Rayner has worked on the Controller 6000, T Series Readers, Mobile Connect and more; culminating in the development of Gallagher’s Controller 7000 Single Door — a ground-breaking design whose DNA is shared by the new Controller 7000 family, including Controller 7000 Enhanced and High Sec Controller 7000.

According to Rayner, the Controller 7000 Single Door was an entirely new product for the Gallagher team. Designed to put significant processing power at the edge in a way less familiar to integrators of the centralised architectures more common in Australia and New Zealand security applications.

“Our initial goal for the C7000 Single Door was to push the product into the USA,” Rayner explains. “We thought New Zealand and Australia wouldn’t be interested in a distributed single door controller. But when released Australian and New Zealand integrators started installing it left, right and centre – they immediately saw the advantages of its flexibility“.

“Perhaps it’s because the C7000 Single Door is PoE powered, which removes the need for a cabinet and a battery, simplifying the installation and making upgrades easier and cheaper for customers when compared to adding full controllers,” Rayner explains.

Drawing on the design and manufacturing aspects of the C7000 Single Door, including Edgelock and Gallagher’s Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), the Controller 7000 Standard was Gallagher and Rayner’s next hardware project, and it was a big one. This was a complete ground-up build designed to merge the power of the latest chipsets with next-generation cybersecurity at every level.

According to Rayner, although the Controller 7000 Standard is a completely new device with an entirely new board design, it has the same footprint as it’s forebear, the venerable Controller 6000.

“When we make new products, we spend a lot of time talking to partners and end users to really understand what problems they have that we can solve,” Rayner says. “One of the challenges we had with upgrading the C6000 was that our customers loved its robustness and compact size, so much so, that plenty of feedback was, ‘don’t change the Controller 6000’.”

Offsetting this plea for continuity was the fact the Controller 6000 needed a complete upgrade. Released in 2009, many of its components were end of life, while the new components available were significantly more powerful, offering greater functionality. Further, the threat profile faced by networked solutions was changing, fast.

Utilising the feedback received, Gallagher’s engineering team decided that a key element of the Controller 7000 Standard upgrade would be to ensure a 6000/7000 upgrade could be undertaken without changing the existing cabling or terminations.

“We have hundreds of thousands of these controllers around the world, and at some stage, they’re all going to need replacing – we wanted to make that process as fast as possible,” Rayner said.

“The upgrade of a Controller 7000 can be done in 15 minutes. It’s as easy as unscrewing the corners of the controller, taking it out, removing the plug-in module, removing the connectors, screwing the new Controller 7000 in, then going into Gallagher Command Centre software and pressing a button that says, “upgrade system to 7000” and boom, upgrade done.”

According to Rayner, the Controller 7000 is designed to deliver the same longevity as the C6000, but with enhanced memory, processing, and cybersecurity. The Controller 7000 Standard operates 10x faster than the Controller 6000, as well as offering 8x more RAM.

There’s also vastly improved cybersecurity, with embedded secure keys at the manufacturing level, while Secure EdgeLock booting means that every time a controller boots up, it checks the operating system hasn’t been rolled back or tampered with.

But the feedback also showed that even with the improvements to the Controller 7000 Standard, some integrators and their customers would require additional functionalities. As Rayner points out, there’s a conundrum in this. How much functionality do you cram into a controller to satisfy the needs of a subset of your end users?

According to Rayner, a key reason Gallagher is releasing different versions of the Controller 7000 is to avoid product bloat, which would see all users paying for high end features most of their applications don’t require.

“Our C7000 Standard controller has everything 80 per cent of our customers will use – it’s a brilliant solution,” he explains. “Many customers may not require dual network redundancy or Gigabit Ethernet, they may not want a serial port.”

“So it was a conscious decision not to include every possible option requested by the one controller, but to develop different versions for high security applications that had specific demands.”

Something to note before we go on is that the Controller 7000 Enhanced and High Sec Controller 7000 can be installed alongside the Controller 7000 Standard in the same applications and will function with the existing version of Gallagher Command Centre – this is not an either/or choice for integrators and their customers – it’s a pick and mix.

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Controller 7000 & 7000 Enhanced – Quick Comparison

What’s the difference between the Controller 7000 and the Controller 7000 Enhanced?

“The Controller 7000 Enhanced retains almost all the functionalities of the Controller 7000 while adding more reliability, redundancy and resilience for those users who need it,” Rayner explains.

“For instance, there are serial ports on the Enhanced that we didn’t put into the Standard, and we’ve also added Gigabit Ethernet to the Enhanced version to support sites with networks that no longer support 10/100 Ethernet“.

“Another key piece of functionality with the Controller 7000 Enhanced is the addition of 2 Ethernet ports, each with its own network interface card,” Rayner says.

“Dual path redundancy means the controller can connect to 2 networks at the same time, or separately, to provide failover for prisons, universities and other, very large organisations.”

“In Australia, we have universities that are geographically separated by huge distances, and it’s not uncommon for workers to dig a hole, go through a fibre cable and suddenly a university has lost connection to its access controller. Dual path redundancy provides protection against that“.

“It’s an important feature for those applications to provide reassurance the access control system will work, even when a network goes down“.

“We also have temperature sensors in the Enhanced controllers,” Rayner says. “Obviously, it gets warm in parts of Australia, and some applications are exposed to intense heat in metal cabinets“.  

“Again, this feature provides resilience. It protects the controller in high-temperature situations so it doesn’t sustain damage which might require a call-out to a remote site for replacement.”

High Sec Controller 7000

The High Sec Controller 7000, which is due for release in Q1 2025, will also be on show at SAGE in Canberra next week.

According to Rayner, while the Controller 7000 Standard already has excellent cybersecurity functionality, the High-Sec C7000 goes a step further, with higher security government and commercial applications firmly in mind.

“The High Sec Controller 7000 is built with FIPS compliant components, and it’s PIV-ready on release,” Rayner explains.

“What this means is that the controller complies with U.S. Federal Government standards for new products, and it meets Class 5 standards, which require monitoring of cabling between device and controller for high security customers.”

As Rayner points out, Gallagher solutions are widely installed in government, defence, high security prisons, data centres and more.

“We’re increasingly seeing an appetite among large users for higher levels of security,” Rayner says. “These are not necessarily government sites, but also commercial enterprises seeking to mitigate risk to ensure business continuity“.

“These users are wanting devices that are PIV-ready to get that extra level of security – they want to get ahead of emerging threats.”

Something that emerges during the conversation about the High Sec Controller 7000 is how ingrained cybersecurity is into every part of what Gallagher does – we keep veering off into layered cybersecurity strategies that apply to all Gallagher’s new controllers.

According to Rayner, end-to-end cybersecurity is something Gallagher has invested in heavily for a long time, to the point cybersecurity has infused every part of the company’s culture.

“There are multiple elements to our cybersecurity strategy, including anti-rollback to expose older operating systems, trust zone manufacturing, immutable unique identity of every controller, and defence against supply chain attacks“.

“We’ve given cybersecurity a lot of thought,” Rayner explains. “We bake in security from the beginning and our team of penetration testers is constantly probing our hardware and software solutions for weaknesses“.

“The idea is that when we bring out new products like Controller 7000 Standard, Controller 7000 Enhanced and High Sec Controller 7000, we can tell our Five Eyes customers that we are doing the best job to provide them with the most secure hardware, firmware, and software available.”

As an example, during the manufacturing process cryptographic keys are created that allow certainty a controller, and its operating system, are genuine.

“Those certificates and keys are stored on the controller, but they also have to be kept somewhere safe outside the controller,” Rayner said. “Obviously, they can’t just be sitting on a workstation somewhere – instead they’re separated into 4 different modules and stored in 4 different locations around New Zealand“.

“This makes it much more difficult for us to release new firmware, because all those keys must be used to sign into the controller, but the process delivers next-level security that, we believe, is required to secure our customers against worst-case scenarios.”

According to Rayner, alarm systems are often installed after a break in, and he believes a similar mind-set applies to cybersecurity, despite its importance to business continuity, reputation protection, and security and safety across every organisation.

“Often senior management doesn’t entirely understand cybersecurity, and that makes it even more important that customers can trust that we are utterly passionate about it.”

Conclusion

Gallagher will be showing the Controller 7000 Enhanced and High Sec Controller 7000 on its stand at Security & Government Expo at the Realm Hotel in Canberra next Thursday, November 21, pre-register here.

“We would encourage anybody who’s interested in learning more about these 2 powerful new Gallagher controllers to come to SAGE next Thursday,” Rayner says.

“The Controller 7000 Enhanced was released last month and while the High Sec Controller 7000 is due for release early 2025, we’ll have it on the stand at SAGE and the team will be itching to explain all the details of both our new controllers.”

You can register for SAGE here, learn more about Gallagher here, or read more SEN news here.

Gallagher Controller 7000 Enhanced And High Sec C7000 Shared Features

• IP based 10/100 Ethernet or Gigabit Ethernet connectivity.
• Access control support for up to 10 wired doors, with multiple readers.
• Intruder alarms monitoring and transmission.
• Serverless enforcement of business policy.
• High speed RS-485 connectivity and software updates to field devices.
• Programmable controller-based logic that operates independently of the server.
• Industry leading authentication and encryption between the C7000 and all Gallagher elements of the system.
• Support for elevator access control.
• Support for integrated perimeter security.
• Support for integration directly with building management systems.
• Support for multiple wiring topologies, allowing easy connectivity of existing field devices without re-wiring.
• Native programming interface for integration between the controller and 3rd party systems, independent of Command Centre server connectivity.
• Multiple cabinetry and powering options dependent on site requirements
• Peer-to-peer inter-controller monitoring.

“Gallagher Controller 7000 Enhanced And High Sec Controller 7000 Offer More Power For High Security Customers.”