In a bid to deal with identity-related security breaches, Airports Authority of India is planning to introduce biometric access control and badging systems at the Chennai Airport. The Airport Director, Deepak Shastri, said that the biometric system would be introduced by next year. The system would regulate employee access throughout the airport and help keep unathorised people out of restricted areas.
The airport is now being manned by Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) personnel, who manually check the staff’s identity cards. It is learnt that the Bureau of Civil Aviation Security is planning to do away with these manual checks and provide its personnel with a secure contactless card, which will have a biometric template for multi-factor authentication. This system can use eye pupils or fingerprints for biometric access. The contactless card will be fool-proof and impossible to replicate, thereby putting in place a mechanism to monitor or control movements of personnel and vehicles into the airport.
The doors and access points would be accessed only by authorised personnel after they have been identified by the system. The authentication of the cardholder will take place at the backend access control system. All successful or unsuccessful attempts will be recorded in the database server.
The development comes even as airports across the world are facing more threats from insiders, as seen in several cases like the bombing of Russian airline Metrojet’s plane, which disintegrated over the Sinai last October. At present personnel are issued simple plastic identity cards called Airport Entry Pass for accessing secure areas in buildings, based on colour-coding.
