Innovation, change key to maritime supply chain security

Computerworld - NEW YORK -- If IT-based efforts to secure the nation's seaports are to succeed, massive change is needed throughout the maritime shipping industry, particularly in the management ranks, said private and government experts at this year's Maritime Security Expo here.
"Containers are inanimate objects. They are and become what humans do to them," said Nancy Williams, vice president of Cotecna Inc., a global cargo inspection company in Geneva. "A sealed, sensored, tracked container guarantees nothing."
Instead, it's the people, processes and data at a shipment's point of origin that is critical, she said.
Approximately 12 million shipping containers are now used by maritime shipping companies worldwide. Of those, approximately 6 million enter the U.S. every year through the nation's more than 300 seaports. From there, they are loaded onto trucks and railroads and shipped throughout the nation. And while some shippers next month will start using new high-tech "smart" containers that include tracking and security sensors, shipments headed for U.S. ports won't be required to use the new containers.
The focus on point-of-origin security inspections and good tracking data is critical to security, Williams and other experts said, because if a weapon of mass destruction is stowed inside a container, it may be too late to prevent a disaster once the shipment arrives at its destination port.
One innovative idea to keep that from happening comes from a joint effort between Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR), a division of the Houston-based oil services company Haliburton, and CACI International Inc., an Arlington, Va.-based IT vendor focused on the defense and intelligence industry. Together, the two firms have developed an IT-based floating port infrastructure that would effectively push port inspections of all cargo ships 100 miles offshore.
KBR's port concept, known officially as its Port Security Initiative, leverages the company's experience with offshore oil-drilling facilities and CACI's experience with software and network integration, said Jim Rama, vice president for special projects at KBR. "These platforms come in various shapes and sizes, are movable and self-powered," he said.
Rama said the idea is to position three or four of the floating platforms off of each coast, thereby reducing the cost of having to conduct extensive security upgrades at all of the nation's ports.
Any effort to improve port security should also include transforming the port "into a point of efficiency" and not just another node in the global transportation network, said Laurance Alvarado, managing director of global trade management at BearingPoint Inc.
One such effort tested this summer by the Strategic Council on