Security in Aviation

 Insider threats in Aviation!

    The biggest threat to aviation does not always come from an outside occurrence such as FOD getting into an engine or the system failure on an aircraft. The biggest threat in aviation comes from insider terrorist attacks in the form of sabotage, espionage, and hijacking. It takes very few resources to be able to completely disable and kill any who would be riding on an aircraft while destroying that same aircraft in the process by using one of the above techniques.

    Sabotage is an act or process tending to hamper or hurt and is deliberate subversion (Merriam-Webster Dictionary, 2022). Sabotage can take place in many ways, whether it's deliberately using improper maintenance practices to cause destruction to an aircraft which could cause catastrophic system failure and death, or it can be on the manufacturer's end by making subpar components that either will not work or have a built-in weakness or fault that will cause injury upon assembly or installation.

    Espionage is the taking of information that could be considered secret or is pivotal in the recreation of a company or government's aircraft to its specifications. It could also be information on the alloys used in the construction of an aircraft rather than a blueprint or a design feature and how that design feature works. 

    Hijacking occurs when an individual from either a rival government or terrorist organization takes the aircraft physically, rerouting it from its present course like what happened in the attacks on the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon on September 11th, 2001. Not all hijackings end in the passengers and the aircraft's destruction. Sometimes, a hijacking is performed in order for it to be ransomed back to the owning government or company for a fee. This is seen often around Somalia with ocean going vessels though and not as often with aircraft.

Stopping insider threats.

    The easiest way to keep insider threats out is with authorized clearance only to certain zones, with a security check point to get into a zone at every entry point. Personnel working inside these zones must obtain a background check and apply for a security clearance based upon the job that they perform prior to gaining entry and be restricted only to the zones in which they perform the task. This however is not a fool proof method and can still be circumvented due to forgery in documentation that they would need for the background check and so on. To keep security personnel from allowing anybody with a potentially forged security pass through, a roster of who can enter should be posted where visible only to security and be checked immediately after inspection of a clearance or workers badge to ensure that names and faces match. This method was very useful during base security operations in the Afghanistan region.

References:

 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Taken 28 July, 2022