Members 1st Credit Union Case Study

As a former officer on the Pennsylvania State Police organized crime detail, Charles (Chip) McBreen has intimate and extensive knowledge of video surveillance equipment. He also spent a number of years working for a national alarm company before being hired to lead security at Members 1st FCU in 2003.

His experience with surveillance technology immediately came in useful in his new position. Members 1st FCU was relying on VCRs for video collection and storage. McBreen quickly came to realize that the credit union's current video set-up was not going to be useful in mitigating the security threats and fraud issues so prevalent in today's banking environment. The VCRs could hold about 36 hours of video, but with the rare exception of a robbery, the bank didn't find out about an incidence of check or account fraud, its biggest source of loss, until a few days after the event occurred at best. Even if the bank had the video, searching through it was an arduous task. He immediately set forth with a search to replace the VHS recorders with a newer product.