Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Aviation's Most Underutilized Security Asset

From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 2004 20:07:47 -0400

Aviation's Most Underutilized Security Asset
by Ray Bernard, PSP

Where do we stand with regard to civil aviation security?

It is impossible to provide a short or complete answer to this question.
There is no security model against which the various components of the
civil aviation system—the airlines, airline service companies, airports,
airport business tenants, local airport security forces and the TSA
screener force—can be rated. (The Israeli model of security doesn’t
scale up. El Al’s 30 planes provide only 90 flights per day, the same as
The Eastern Iowa Airport in Cedar Rapids, a tiny fraction of the
approximately 25,000 daily flights from U.S. airports.) There are no
scorecards by which, from one year to the next, we can formally rate
security progress.

Nonetheless there are thousands of people with security responsibilities
in aviation system jobs, and millions more who are also stakeholders in
aviation security—the flying public and the employees whose jobs,
directly or indirectly, depend upon the successful future operation of
the civil aviation system. Regardless of how difficult the job is, we
have no choice but to improve aviation security. Too much depends upon
it. The key question is whether we will do it poorly or well.
Security Gaps

Rep. Markey Fights for Screening of all Cargo Carried by Passenger
Airplanes at a Press Conference. October 1, 2003
On February 11, 2004 Congressman Edward J. Markey introduced bill HR
3798 (download Letter and Bill in PDF format), to amend the Homeland
Security Act of 2002 to improve aviation security. The bill calls for
seven specific reforms:
? Mandatory, physical inspection of all cargo transported on passenger
airplanes;

? Prohibition of foreign flights from taking off or landing in the U.S.
unless air marshals of a foreign country are onboard, if requested by
the Department of Homeland Security;

? Authority for U.S. Federal Air Marshals to travel on cargo planes;

? The requirement that the Department of Homeland Security develop a
plan to improve coordination with foreign counterparts, particularly in
the area of air marshals and improved perimeter security at airports
abroad;

? Establishment of uniform security standards for airport workers with
access to sensitive areas, including screening for metal objects and
hazardous substances and background checks that verify Social Security
numbers and query terrorist watch lists;

? Requirement that the Department of Homeland Security issue regulations
mandating that air carriers train pilots on how to maneuver passenger
planes safely in the event that the plane is hit by a surface-to-air
missile;

 The requirement that flight attendants have a secure, wireless means to
communicate to the cockpit crew, Federal Air Marshals and authorities on
the ground regarding the existence of a terrorist threat, even if the
intercom system is disabled.
Regarding the bill, called the Secure Existing Aviation Loopholes (SEAL)
Act, Congressman Markey says, “Repeated disruptions in airline service
and exploitation of the cargo screening loophole have demonstrated that
we must take a comprehensive approach to improving the level of security
across the aviation system.” These reforms, if enacted, would indeed
close some major existing security gaps. But much more is needed in
order to reach the higher levels of security that are obtainable.

Comprehensive Security

One phrase in Markey’s comment will strike a chord with many security
practitioners: comprehensive approach. The Merriam-Webster online
dictionary provides two definitions for comprehensive:

1. covering completely or broadly;
2. having or exhibiting wide mental grasp.
Mark Denari, Director of Public Safety and Security for San Diego
International Airport, says, “Our civil aviation system was built to
support a complex and open society. The primary challenge for aviation
security practitioners is to establish a comprehensive security program,
given the huge breadth of aviation system activities and the finite
scope of resources. The civil aviation system is not a single business
or organization. It’s composed of a multitude of local, national and
international businesses and organizations, working together to provide
a workable air transportation system. Each organization has to remain
viable and achieve its mission, in order for the civil aviation system
to work. It’s not just passengers and planes that we have to secure. We
have to protect the operations of the entire system—a system built to be
open, and to provide high volume services at a very fast pace. The
nature of the system contributes to its vulnerability.”

In its publication Making the Nation Safer: The Role of Science and
Technology in Countering Terrorism, the National Research Council (NRC)
states, “Our society is too complex and interconnected to defend against
all possible threats.” Thus the same can be said for civil aviation.

Following the NRC report, the Transportation Research Board published
Special Report 270 titled, Deterrence, Protection, And Preparation: The
New Transportation Security Imperative, which explains why a
comprehensive approach to security is an absolute necessity:

The nation’s vast air, land, and maritime transportation systems are
marvels of innovation and productivity, but they are designed to be
accessible, and their very function is to concentrate passenger and
freight flows in ways that can create many vulnerabilities for
terrorists to exploit. Prospects for defending against each of these
vulnerabilities through traditional means, such as “guards, guns, and
gates,” are dim. The transportation sector is simply too large and the
threats faced too diverse and ever-changing for such blanket approaches
to work. Moreover, if applied in the large and diffuse transportation
sector, these approaches run the risk of creating a diluted and
patchwork collection of poorly connected defenses that disperse security
resources while leaving many vulnerabilities unprotected against a
terrorist attack.

Transportation security can best be achieved through coherent security
systems that are well integrated with transportation operations and are
deliberately designed to deter terrorists even as they selectively guard
against and prepare for terrorist attacks. In particular, layered
security systems, characterized by an interleaved and concentric set of
security features, have the greatest potential to deter and protect.
Layered systems cannot be breached by the defeat of a single security
feature—such as a gate or guard—as each layer provides backup for the
others, so that impermeability of individual layers is not required.
Moreover, the interleaved layers can confound the would-be terrorist.
Calculating the odds of breaching a multitiered system of defense is far
more difficult than calculating the odds of defeating a single,
perimeter protection.

The Transportation Research Board special report also states:

The dangers of not taking such a coherent, systems approach to security
were manifest in the aviation sector on September 11. Commercial
aviation has been the subject of hostile attacks for more than 30 years.
Each new attack has prompted the advent of more technologies,
procedures, and rules—each superimposed on those previously introduced,
and designed mainly to prevent a recurrence of similar attacks. Aviation
security has not been provided through truly systematic means, but
rather through a collection of mostly unrelated measures that have
hinged on a very high and sustained level of performance from each, with
little or no backup and redundancy. By overcoming a single perimeter
defense, such as a metal detector, an attacker could, in effect,
overcome the entire security regime.

Technology Deployment Is No Small Issue
Federally mandated security technology initiatives continue to roll
forward airport by airport. These initiatives are lengthy and expensive
initiatives, whose schedules are measured more in years than in months.
The security industry continues to strive to develop new technologies to
help fill the security detection and prevention gaps that still remain;
there can be no schedule for those results.

The Faith Group, headed by Faith Varwig, is a planning and consulting
firm whose mission with regard to their aviation clients is to help
unfold the complex issues surrounding continued operational changes,
including those brought about by new security and baggage inspection
requirements. Varwig says, “Perimeter security is one example of an
issue that seems simple at first thought, but in reality is far from
simple. There is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, and for most airports
just defining ‘the perimeter’ is a complex issue. For example, many
airport properties have water boundaries. Portions of some airport
perimeters are not under direct airport control, because tenants occupy
perimeter buildings. Some have endangered animal species that live on
the perimeter land. What’s more, the FAA and TSA regulations have no
clear cut definition of what is meant by ‘airport perimeter.’”

Paul Foster is Manager, Aviation Security and Special Systems at San
Francisco International Airport. Foster says, “If part of your airport
perimeter is water, who monitors it? How far out does the airport
authority extend? Who responds to water-based threats? Is it the Airport
Police, the Harbor Patrol, the Coast Guard or all of them? And how to
they respond—by helicopter, by boat, or by jeep? The situation is often
one of cross-jurisdictional issues touching upon city, county and other
regulations.” These kinds of issues have to be resolved, and security
plans and procedures developed, before you can begin to identify
technology that will work to support your security objectives.

Aviation’s Most Underutilized Security Asset

A recent airport experience gave me additional insight into what is
probably the most underutilized security asset for civil aviation
security: the people in and around the civil aviation system. While many
organizations glibly state “our people are our most important asset”, a
look at the training plans and budgets of most organizations reveals
that people are often the most neglected asset—especially from a
security training perspective.

In mid 2003 I spent several days performing an airport perimeter photo
survey for an urban regional airport. In a few spots I took photos from
inside my car; mostly I walked around the streets outside of the
airport. Since it was 2-½ years after September 11, I wasn’t expecting
the magnitude of response from people not employed by the airport or by
an airport business. Each day several non-airport individuals called the
police to report my taking photos of the airport. Two drivers circled
around to note my license plate, as I snapped pictures of the airport
from inside my car at the side of the road. Each day I was directly
confronted by several non-security people, who asked what I was doing or
who stated, “You can’t take pictures of the airport.” One hi-lo driver
who was unloading a truck waved me forward, shut off his hi-lo, and
asked me what I was doing. In each instance I showed my airport ID badge
and a letter from the airport explaining what I was doing. That wasn’t
enough for most individuals, who contacted the airport or the police to
verify my story.

[Note: There is no law against taking pictures at an airport. The
statements were made by non-airport folks who were reacting to news
reports stating that police and airport security personnel were watching
for suspicious behavior at airports, such as the taking of photos.

I’m hoping that these individuals were commended. When ordinary citizens
go out of the way to provide helpful specifics to the authorities, a
“thank-you” letter or note is probably warranted, and will go a long way
to support local awareness of airport security.

Expanding the Scope of Airport Security

The responses to the airport perimeter survey highlight the role that
individual initiative can play. Enhancing the security role of people
already on the job at airports would be a tiny cost compared to most
other security initiatives, yet it holds much greater potential for
filling in security gaps—especially the gaps that technology just can’t
fill.

George Teebay, former Federal Security Manager for San Francisco
International Airport, points out that existing regulations and
procedures can be leveraged to increase security for airside operations.
Teebay explains, “Before September 11, many airports found it beneficial
to minimize their SIDA [Security Identification Display Area]. These
days, airports would be well advised to expand the SIDA to include
everything inside the perimeter fence except for FBO ramps. This
triggers Criminal History Records Checks (CHRC) and SIDA training for
employees in those areas. The CHRC gives the airport assurance that
people who are in there on a daily basis have no disqualifying
convictions, and thus reduces insider threat. By training the workforce
and sensitizing them to aviation security issues, you expand the
challenge area, and have additional trained security ‘eyes and ears’ who
may be able to interdict a field side penetration of the Secured Area
from other areas of the airport.” To minimize unbudgeted costs and ID
office workload, this can be phased in over perhaps a year.

A multi-layered security system includes layers composed of policies and
procedures, which define required personnel behavior as well as aspects
of individual security awareness. Traditional personnel-based security
measures, such as a rotating “buddy system” (no single person can occupy
sensitive areas or perform sensitive tasks), can be applied on an
airport-specific basis to strengthen security where there is risk of
insider threat, such as for some aspects of baggage handling. An
additional 15 minutes or so of security awareness and procedure training
can easily be added to the TSA-required SIDA training classes, and can
be tailored for the particular category of attendees. Certainly it’s a
bother to go beyond the mandated generic training, but it’s also a
low-cost and low-effort means of adding additional layers to existing
security.

The great potential of personnel-based security actions is that people
are in every part of the civil aviation system. There is no other
resource that is as pervasive and flexible as people are. People can be
deployed much more quickly than just about any type of technology—all
that’s required is their willingness and a bit of training or
instruction.

Paul Foster mentions one example of where the security awareness of
individuals is vital: “It’s always an ongoing battle to keep the airport
perimeter ‘clear zone’ clear. Technology can help somewhat, but
ultimately it depends upon the initiative of the many people involved.”

The increased utilization of existing personnel is probably the most
cost-effective and universally available resource for filling many of
the existing gaps in aviation security. Across the boards in aviation
security, how we utilize our people is a big factor in whether we do
aviation security poorly or well.

From a Special Supplement to the folllowing April 2004 magazines:
Airport Business, Mass Transportation, Security Technology & Design, and
Security Dealer.

http://www.go-rbcs.com/AvSecAsset.htm

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From: Rick Parrish <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 13:36:09 -0500

[email-masked] wrote:

>? Requirement that the Department of Homeland Security issue regulations mandating that air carriers train pilots on how to maneuver passenger planes safely in the event that the plane is hit by a surface-to-air missile;
>  
>
... another example of feel-good proposals offered by a well-meaning 
layperson. This item can be dropped ... the pilots already train for 
in-flight emergencies on a recurring basis. The pilot's response is 
simple ... assess working systems, declare an emergency and land at the 
nearest airport. That's exactly what these crews did ...

/Other passengers were just as confused. "It felt like something fell 
off the wing," said Kerry Levy.
/
http://travel.guardian.co.uk/airterror/story/0,1335,850766,00.html

/... a DHL A300, had just departed from Baghdad on a cargo flight to 
Bahrain on 22 November 2003 when it was reportedly hit by a SAM-7 
surface to air missile. The left wing caught fire ...
/
http://www.airsafe.com/journal/v1num18.htm

-rick

 
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