Could your plant be turned into a weapon of mass destruction? Could the goods you manufacture be intentionally contaminated or your hazardous materials stolen? Would a terrorist attack on your site disrupt lives and upset the local, regional or national economy? How resistant are your operation’s computer networks to cyber attack?
Following 9/11, industrial organizations and legislators placed renewed attention on security concerns. Chemical plants, water systems, oil refineries, food manufacturers, the electrical grid – American industry is rife with risk. A variety of technologies can help control access to your plant, materials and information, and mitigate the risk of becoming an unwitting party to a terrorist event.
Site access control - Companies such as Autoclear and Rapiscan Systems manufacture industrial security products for access control. The goal is to stop contraband from entering your workplace and prevent intellectual property from walking out. Metallic weapons, plastic and ceramic firearms, explosives, cameras, recording devices and illegal drugs are among the targets of these technologies.
For highly secured environments, the Secure 1000 people-screening solution by Rapiscan Systems uses backscatter image technology to reveal objects concealed under or within clothing. When the emitted beam contacts organic materials, it scatters back toward the system sensors. The information is passed to advanced image-processing software that reveals organic materials such as explosives, narcotics and ceramic weapons, and inorganic materials such as metals, powders and liquid slurries. Some have described the resultant images as a virtual strip-search. To address privacy concerns, Rapiscan notes that the image-saving feature can be disabled, and the company references a study that found 19 out of 20 people preferred a Secure 1000 scan to an invasive pat-down physical search.
Autoclear’s CheckGate walkthrough metal detectors and HandWand hand-held metal detectors use digital signal processing and advanced electronics to discriminate and locate metal weapons and explosives parts. The company also offers conveyor-style X-ray scanners with RealClear imaging, which reveals in real time on a computer monitor dense items such as guns, knives, bombs and narcotics. The company has X-ray devices for screening large cargo pallets and containers as well as large parcels, and portable, compact units suited for screening mail, laptops, purses, backpacks and small parcels. A series of mailroom-specific units detect metallic mail bomb and pipe bomb components.
Scintrex Trace offers products and systems that detect trace amounts of specific explosives and narcotics. One example is the VE6000, a drive-through system that detects large, vehicle-mounted bombs. It’s automated for continuous operation and detects TNT, nitroglycerin, ammonium nitrate, ethylene glycol dinitrate, ortho- and para-mononitrolotuene; 2,3 dimethyl 2,3 dinitrobutane; dynamite; smokeless powder and other commercially available explosives. The company’s E3500 is a portable, hand-held device used for non-invasive searches of clothing, parcels, containers, vehicles and documents. It detects military, commercial and homemade explosives, liquid and powdered, such as triacetone triperoxide and other related peroxides, ICAO taggants, plastic explosives, ammonium nitrate, black powder and other nitrates.
Materials access control - Shipment tracking and advanced shipment notification systems help prevent potentially hazardous materials from being intercepted en route.
With communication standards such as electronic data interchange (EDI) and RosettaNet, you can be notified when shipments are due to arrive at your site.
GSQA’s Global Supplier Quality Assurance requires a supplier to enter advanced shipment notification, including when the material ships and when it’s expected to be delivered. The Web application supports compliance with the recordkeeping and traceability requirement listed in Section 306 of the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 by storing shipping information and detailed lot data, and providing "where used" lot tracking throughout your facilities.
Within the plant, radio-frequency identification (RFID) can strengthen security against theft by automating the tracking of material pallets as they move from location to location. Manhattan Associates’ RFID in a Box is a packaged RFID system that includes hardware, services and training.
Cyber access control - While the cyber attack in the movie “Live Free or Die Hard” might be a credibility stretch, the threat of cyber terrorism and information warfare remains an ongoing concern. Internet and computer system vulnerabilities are persistent, and companies like Symantec are working to minimize the risk. In addition to antivirus, data and network security solutions, the company offers Symantec DeepSight Early Warning Services. It provides proactive security vulnerability and threat information customized to your IT environment, mitigation recommendations for known and emerging vulnerabilities, impact analyses and links to security patches.
E-mail Contributing Editor Sheila Kennedy, managing director of Additive Communications, at [email protected].