Respond to New and Emerging Security Threats

"None of us can do the job of effective security by ourselves," said Vera Adams, Director, Director, Aviation Division, Office of Security Policy and Industry Engagement, TSA. "We have to work in a very integrated fashion."

During the Respond to New and Emerging Security Threats session moderated by William Vanecek, Director of Aviation, Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, many such valuable suggestions such as this were shared by the panelists.

Adams stressed the importance of having security policies that could be implemented, were practical and were going to be effective. She also brought up the need to have complementary programs, ones that weren’t "at odds with each other, or we run risk of being ineffective and inefficient." Adams touched on ideas currently being used, or in the works, as well. She encouraged everyone to sign up for the Rap Back program, which is a "perpetual vetting process for employees." And, she definitely encourages the use of biometrics. "Biometrics are a really good upgrade for access controls."

Neil Perry, Vice President, Service Delivery, CATSA, explained that all organizations manage risk and some assess threats - threat of completion, threat of market fluctuations, etc. We break down physical threats, aviation security and explosive threats, he said. "We don’t do it alone, however. There are partnerships." He said that to assess the risk of threats, "you rely on intelligence." Once they have all the information, you have to analyze it. The CATSA Threat Detection Baseline defines minimum threat detection standards, focuses on historical and current trends, and is adjusted, as necessary. "New ones come along, but we can’t stop looking at the old ones either," he explained.

This important aspect was reinforced by Jim Marriot, Aviation Security at ICAO. "It is very tempting to be attracted to the new emerging threats and forget about the previous ones," he said. "Threats don’t go away. They’ve been successful in the past, they’ll be tried again. It is not a list of threats where you add a new one and then you take one off." He said the challenge that ICAO has "is like the challenge you have at your airport. We have a lot of different players that need to be organized and aligned to achieve results." And there has been strong progress made recently. The first-ever Global Aviation Security Plan is being proposed at ICAO. "It will be a priority," he said. And, last week, the United Nations adopted an aviation security program (available on the Security Council website). This is another validating example of the fact that there is now "a strong rudder guiding aviation security."