Go manual in case of cyber attacks on airports: Experts

KOLKATA: Around 200 Indians from both state-owned AAI and private operators GMR and GVK have been accreditated by the agency
A team of airport safety and security experts from Canada, Australia,, Croatia, Singapore, Abu Dhabi, Morocco and Kenya is currently in Kolkata to look at the city airport’s preparedness and standard operating procedures (SOPs) it has in place to tackle exigencies.On Wednesday, Kolkata airport turned into a laboratory of sorts for the teams to conduct experiments with various scenarios and look at the airport’s response to them.
“We selected Kolkata airport for the first such programme because we feel the airport has an expertise in emergency response. The SOPs followed here are robust and have the potential to become the best practices to be followed at other airports to deal with cyber security threats,” said Coutu.
The airport director, Atul Dikshit, is one of the first graduates in the IAP-ICAO programme. Around 200 Indians from both state-owned AAI and private operators GMR and GVK have been accreditated by the agency.
Coutu though believes the global airport professionals present will have much to learn from Kolkata airport as its manual backup is what is required the world over to insulate the airport’s critical functions from cyber terror. “Airport professionals who have come to Kolkata are specialists in emergency response, hijack, crash and other exigencies. Their job is to anticipate situation and be prepared to tackle them. Now cyber attack has emerged as another form of terrorism that can cripple flight planning and ATC. The SOPs that Kolkata airport follows will be extremely handy as most other airports are completely dependent on automation and long forgotten manual procedures,” he said.
Dikshit said it was a privilege to share the practices at Kolkata airport with professionals from across the globe. “We’ll be only too happy to contribute to safety at other airports,” he said.