Case Study: Macquarie University achieves enhanced crisis communication and campus safety with BlackBerry AtHoc

Macquarie University Protects its People Through Better Crisis Communication

Macquarie University, a large international campus in Australia with about 40,000 students and 5,000 staff, needed a reliable way to protect people across a complex site of labs, hospitals, offices and nearby public areas. With no national unified emergency system, the university faced the challenge of delivering fast, multi-channel, privacy‑compliant alerts to a BYOD population and external partners on a 24x7 basis while avoiding operational delays and expensive on‑site infrastructure.

Macquarie deployed BlackBerry AtHoc as a cloud, multimodal crisis‑communication platform integrated with social channels, RSS, app, SMS, phone, email and single‑sign‑on; users select preferred channels via a self‑service portal and the system supports two‑way messaging, geo‑targeting, a duress button, templates, and auditing. The solution improved real‑time coordination (successfully used during a campus flood), extended reach to partners and first responders, reduced infrastructure costs, and strengthened privacy, compliance and overall crisis readiness.

Macquarie University

John Durbridge

Campus Security Manager