DHS S&T Opens New T&E Lab at TSL in Atlantic City
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate has opened a new Test and Evaluation (T&E) Laboratory building at the Transportation Security Laboratory (TSL) in Atlantic City, N.J. The new building expands TSL’s reinforced laboratory space for conducting tests of explosives detection systems. One of TSL’s primary responsibilities is to provide independent T&E of commercial explosives detection equipment and certify them for use in checked luggage and checkpoint environments. The facility consists of specialized explosive storage and handling areas and a multi-laboratory infrastructure designed to test and evaluate technology for explosives and contraband detection and blast mitigation. S&T says that the new lab allows the scientists and engineers at the TSL to conduct more performance tests with its unique variety of commercial, military and non-traditional explosives. “While you may not hear it on the news, the work on this 12-acre secure campus is helping us thwart the terror threats that crop up around the world,” says Dr. Robert Griffin, acting under secretary of S&T.
New Zealand Customs Testing New Kiosk for Families
Safran Identity & Solutions says that a new self-service kiosk solution it developed for families traveling together is being tested by New Zealand Customs on departures at Christchurch Airport. The company says that currently families with children under 12-years and assisted travelers are unable to use automated eGates and are required to go through the manual booth for customs and immigration checks. The new kiosk verifies passenger identity with facial recognition, with cameras able to capture passengers between 1 meter to 2.1 meters in height, with no moving parts. The kiosk also features a touchscreen interface to process family groups with mandatory questions and allow parents to respond for their children. “Family processing forms part of our next-generation border control solution,” says Tim Ferris, managing director for Morpho Australasia. He says the solution enables family groups to stay together without being separated.
Princeton Identity Announces Face and Iris Access Control System
Princeton Identity has introduced its IOM Acess200, a face and iris system that includes PIN and card capabilities that processes identification with a quick glance at any point of entrance where secure access is needed. The wall-mounted system is the company’s first new product as a standalone company. “When it comes to access control, you no longer need to sacrifice security for convenience, and the new IOM Access200 proves that by offering accurate and secure identity management powered by biometrics,” says Mark Clifton, CEO of Princeton Identity. The new system is capable of dual or single iris recognition and it includes two-way communication, touch screen for an easy user interface, and is identification and verification or enrollment compliant.
DHS S&T Working with Arctic Center on Long-Range AUV to Support Coast Guard
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate is partnering with the Arctic Domain Awareness Center (ADAC) and Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to develop the Tethys Long Range Autonomous Underwater Vehicle (LRUAV) to assist with under-ice gathering efforts. The system can be deployed by two people and has a range greater than 600-kilometers at a speed of about two knots. “We are creating robotic systems that are small, mobile, connected, and enduring, making them a perfect match for the remote Arctic,” says James Bellingham, director of WHOI’s Center for Marine Robotics. “Our goal is to give the Coast Guard the ability to understand an incident while there is still time to react.” The LRUAV, currently in the prototype stage, is designed to be transported via helicopter and pitched into an open water zone, where it can then guide itself to the site of an environmental hazard. ADAC is one of S&T’s Centers of Excellence and is led by the Univ. of Alaska Anchorage.
DHS S&T Working to Prevent Telephony Denial of Service Attacks
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology (S&T) Directorate is funding two research projects designed to harden defenses against attacks that deny telephone services. The first project is being led by SecureLogix, which is a voice over Internet Protocol security specialist, and involves the development of a prototype solution for complex Telephony Denial of Service (TDoS) that will use a multi-level filter approach to analyze and assign a threat score to each incoming call in real-time. That score will help distinguish legitimate from malicious calls and help mitigate an influx of malicious calls by terminating or redirecting them to a lower priority queue, a partner service that could manage the calls, or to an additional services that could verify each call’s legitimacy. SecureLogix will deploy the prototype at a customer location, within the cloud and at a service provider network. The second project includes a research team led by the Univ. of Houston that is addressing the vulnerability of Emergency 911 and Next-Generation 911 systems to TDOS, Distributed Denial of Service, and robocall attacks, all of which threaten public safety. The research team includes SecureLogix, FirstWatch, the Industry Council for Emergency Response Technologies, and cyber security analysts who specialize in penetration tests of telephony systems.
SwRI Helps Develop System to Destroy Chemical Warfare Agents
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) says it helped develop and recently completed initial testing of a field-deployable treatment system that destroys chemical warfare agents (CWAs) using locally available resources. SwRI says the modular unit is designed to fit into a shipping container for transport and includes two pollution abatement configurations, one wet and one dry process, which can be deployed depending on the available resources of the location. SwRI designed the dry pollution control process for use with the institute’s dedicated EGR engine thermal destruction device developed for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Agnostic Compact Demilitarization of Chemical Agents (ACDC) program. Once the CWAs are destroyed, exhaust gases pass through the SwRI soil-based fluidized bed where the combusted byproducts are captures. The used soil remains non-hazardous. SwRI says a Canadian company developed the wet pollution control system. The systems are being developed under a DARPA contract.
Smiths Completes Acquisition of Morpho Detection
Britain’s Smiths Group earlier this month completed its acquisition of Morpho Detection from France’s Safran Group. Smiths Group must still divest Morpho’s explosive trace detection business, which both European and U.S. required as a condition for approving the $710 million deal that was first announced in April 2016. Smiths Group’s Smiths Detection business already has an ETD product line. The three main competitors worldwide for ETD units are Smiths, Morpho and L3 Technologies [LLL]. China’s NucTec also sells the technology. Potential buyers Morpho’s ETD line include Leidos [LDOS] and OSI Systems’ [OSIS] Rapiscan Systems business unit, industry officials believe. Smiths is supposed to divest Morpho’s ETD business within three months of the U.S. Justice Department approving the deal, which happened on March 30. The acquisition provides Smiths Detection with a strong product line of explosives detection systems that automatically screen checked bags for explosives at airports worldwide.