Controls access to Lockboxes to discourage theft of cable television service. It provides an audit trail in the form of a permanent log for Lockbox access, to include dates, times, and names of field service technicians, who as authorized agents of the MSO, obtain access to Lockboxes.

Detects and reports instances of unauthorized Lockbox access in a timely manner, and provides a permanent log of these occurrences to include the location, date, and time of occurrence.

Manages controlled access to Lockboxes by MSO appointed field service technicians. This is accomplished by assigning electronic access keys to designated technicians in a manner that can be electronically tracked by the Lockbox Management System. The LBMS provides the means to impose access restrictions on an individual basis. A field technician is given access to Lockboxes in one or more assigned Zones, and only during a prescribed period of the day, as determined at the time the technician is entered in the system. Access privileges can be changed as needed by an MSO appointed authority.

Provides the means to decommission field service technicians whenever there is a need to revoke access privileges. Electronic keys are activated and deactivated from a computer console. The authority to perform this function is restricted to the system administrator or other MSO designated individual by means of password protection.

Performs Lockbox Verification. Visits all Lockboxes in the service area electronically in a never-ending repetition, such that no Lock Box can be neglected longer than a prescribed verification interval. This assures that in instances where Lockboxes become incapacitated or otherwise lose the ability to communicate with the Lockbox Manager, the failure will not go undetected for longer than the verification interval. A maximum interval of two hours appears reasonable, but this parameter could be adjusted up or down as actual performance statistics become available.

Provides an easy to use filter system to identify and extract data of interest from the permanent log for review by the system administrator. Filter criteria includes date and time, Zones, Sites, Lockbox ID, and status events such as lockbox-opened, lockbox-closed, and lockbox-breached. A string search is provided to locate entries by address or other text strings accompanying records of interest.

Remotely monitors Lockbox temperature and AC power feed, and alerts the system operator when these parameters exceed configurable thresholds.

Displays Lockbox Management System Run-Time metrics such as connections per minute, TCP messages per minute, and the number of Lockboxes that are unlocked, compromised, or have failed to communicate at any given instance, to mention a few.

The lockbox that RSS recommends is the steel “box in a box” design. The lockbox has no accessible external access points. The Lockbox Management System can be installed in most Lockbox types that MSO’s are currently using.

The Lockbox Manager Application Software is written to run on Microsoft Windows 2000 and XP Operating Systems. The amount of disk storage needed is determined by the size of the system and the desired retention period for the activity log, but it is not expected to exceed 20 gigabytes in any given LBMS network. This is a conservative figure, based upon a 50,000 Lockbox system. RAID technology is recommended to safeguard against permanent loss of activity log content in the event of equipment failure.