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TAPA EMEA PREMIER PARTNER VIEWPOINT


MISSION: SUPPLY CHAIN SECURITY


Security is becoming more and more crucial as criminals, including Organised Crime Groups, see Logistics and Transport operations as increasingly attractive targets. How can the role of predictive security enhance the functions of Security Managers to prevent supply chain attacks and the use of jammers to target vehicles, and enhance defensive strategies?


Thousands of sensors and cameras are installed in warehouses or on trucks to monitor yards, bays, doors and access gates, and outdoor areas where we can zoom in to read a number plate at a distance of 200 meters. Day and night, thanks to sophisticated night vision cameras. We check the trucks doors on the road, the driver’s cab, require the driver to enter an access code when getting behind the wheel, remotely turn the engine on and off, and provide ad hoc procedures if there’s a suspicion that the driver is under threat. And, in some cases, we even “enter” the cab and record everything that happens onboard.


These technological solutions are driven by “guardian angels” who sit in Control Rooms to check the alerts that the systems are constantly triggering. Every unexpected event must be checked, every report must be verified and – even if in 99% of cases they are alerts that are quickly de-classified as physiological events - sometimes they reveal an attempt at intrusion or theft of the vehicle and its cargo.


So, what is the reason for a structure that requires continuous investment in both human resources and technologies? It’s because we have to get there before it happens, as preventing an attack has a triple value:


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Insurance - as it eliminates or reduces disputes when it is easy to prove that the transport company has implemented every possible active and passive protection, even beyond what is contractually signed


• in terms of service - since the customer sees their goods protected


• in terms of image - since suffering a theft represents a direct economic damage for a logistics operator, due to the stolen goods and, an indirect one, due to the loss of trust and, therefore, of business.


There are loads of medicines, mobile phones, tobacco or electronics worth millions of euros, or pallets in stock from which goods worth tens of thousands of euros can disappear in a few seconds. And if it is not the customers themselves who demand strict security procedures, it must be the logistics operator who must feel the need to protect sites and goods, starting with those products - such as mobile phones or tobacco - which equate to cash.


The history of security


Once upon a time there was security, made up of guards, telephone alarms and almost entirely delegated to the human being who, as such, can make mistakes or fail to perform his task perfectly, thus becoming a contributory cause of an event. In the last 10 years, security has reached its full maturity, particularly with the availability of technologies that allow hundreds of vehicles, tens of thousands of square meters of sites, and thousands of direct and indirect employees, to be kept under control, and the latter to be made responsible on the one hand, to be controlled on the other. It is no coincidence that particular importance must be entrusted to the training and loyalty of human resources.


‘The first aim of criminals is not to steal the truck but its contents: if we prevent the vehicle from continuing its journey, if we stop it in unforeseen places, we raise the danger threshold perceived by criminals, who almost always give up.’


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