We are only ever as strong as our weakest link, a UK Department for Transport (DfT) speaker told the UK Security Expo 2017. He was Kashif Chaudry, head of aviation security international operations.
Speaking to one of the largest audiences for a talk at the two-day show at London Olympia, pictured – about 150 people, by security expo standards an enormous number – he made the point about weakest links to argue that the UK needs to help other countries with aviation security. He warned that attackers are ever more sophisticated, which underlined how important it was to keep UK security policies, and technological capabilities, one step ahead ‘of those who seek to attack us’.
Successful attacks against aviation remain a possibility, he said, as aviation is an ‘attractive target and will always appeal to terrorists’. He stressed that what he called ‘old fashioned threats’ to aviation did not go away: “It’s about finding the right balance of proportionality,” he said of securing against such threats. He said it was fair to assume that terrorists were developing their capabilities, and might be buying x-ray screening machines and other security technology, ‘to see how they can circumvent it’. He suggested that even then, terrorist groups will be actively plotting to consider how to bring down an aircraft: “That should be a concrete thought for all of us.”
He spoke of aviation security requiring good intelligence; robust security arrangements; and airlines and government having a role. He went through the UK’s aviation security assessment programme, and its partnership approach; and spoke of the UK’s leading role in the UN Security Council resolution 2309, passed in 2016, which he called a first on international aviation security. He touched on the work by other international bodies since, such as the ICAO (International Civil Aviation Organization), which in November 2017 endorsed a first Global Aviation Security Plan.
Stressing the international and partnership sides of avsec, he suggested that such security should start earlier than at the airport, and argued for what he called ‘a more integrated approach to security; inudstry has a really important role to play in developing our capabilities and that is why government needs to work with them. It’s very much about prevention of things getting on to aircraft.’ As to what an integrated approach actually meant, for screening of passengers, he went on to speak of rather than one size fits all security, how we might consider a ‘whole systems approach’: “This is not for the UK to do alone.”
Other aviation security speakers at the Expo included the consultants Andy Blackwell and Neville Hay, and Tim Cook, head of Future Aviation Security Solutions (FASS) at the DfT; and on the supplier and manufacturer side, James Canham, MD, Accenture Border Services, and Cameron Mann, global market director, aviation, at Smiths Detection. A lawyer, Dr Rekekah Tanti-Dougall, spoke on 2309 and the cyber terrorism threat to aviation.
The UK Security Expo 2018 will run at the same venue on November 28 and 29. Visit https://www.uksecurityexpo.com/.
