Responding to demand from its customers for ways to automate security reporting and to network different pieces of security equipment, Smiths Detection has introduced its FirstView-LINX security software platform for air cargo screening.
The FirstView-LINX workstation connects the company’s HI-SCAN X-Ray systems and IONSCAN 500DT explosives trace detectors, providing screening results from the two systems in a single view to better resolve concerns and alarms.
Moreover, the new computer networking tool also allows air cargo screening operators, such as air carriers, freight forwarders and other certified cargo screening facilities that use one or both of the Smiths Detection screening systems to automatically generate required reports and documentation as part of screening operations.
Currently that reporting to comply with Transportation Security Administration standards is a manually intensive process, James Viscardi, vice president of Sales for Smiths Detection, tells TR2. He says the company’s customers in the air cargo screening market that have been using their screening systems for a while voiced a common need for a better way of doing their audit reporting.
Data and documentation are needed related to scanned cargo results, personnel security, procedural security, information technology security, facility validation and chain of custody standards, Viscardi says. FirstView-LINX provides a way to “consolidate the information and automatically update these types of reports that you have to fill out for the TSA,” he says.
Viscardi says that the “overwhelming response” from Smiths Detections air cargo customers has been “please bring it to us.”
As to the security benefit of FirstView-LINX, Viscardi says the system has an alarm console that would typically be used to help resolve alarms. In an operation where a HI-SCAN system is being used for primary screening and the IONSCAN to do alarm resolution, if there is an indication of a possible threat after both systems have been used then a person looking at the FirstView-LINX dual-view screen can make a decision about alarm resolution protocol, he says.
Typically the operator of the HI-SCAN system won’t have the time to do the alarm resolution using FirstView-LINX because of how quickly items are being put through the X-Ray system, Viscardi says. Having the alarm resolution elsewhere prevents screening operations from being halted while the suspect box is dealt with elsewhere, he adds.
Smiths Detection plans to embed its software for FirstView-LINX on HI-SCAN and IONSCAN systems it sells, which means it has to be put through the approval process with TSA to make sure it doesn’t affect how the system works. That testing with TSA is slated for August. The company has begun marketing the product so that it can begin selling once TSA approves it, Viscardi says.
In addition to the trace detection and X-Ray systems, FirstView-LINX can also be integrated with legacy video and access control systems to oversee command and control for all physical and cargo security for an entire warehouse, Viscardi says.
Smiths Detection is not disclosing a price yet for FirstView-LINX until after TSA approves it.