GE Security Explosives Detection Systems Help Protect Homeward-Bound Olympic Athletes and Visitors Using Beijing Capital International Airport

Twelve GE Security CTX 9000 DSi Inline Checked Bag Screening Systems Now Operating at BCIA's Terminal Three in Time for Departing Beijing 2008 Olympic Games Visitors, Athletes

Taken from MarketWatch.com

BEIJING, Aug 22, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- GE Security, Inc., a business of GE Enterprise Solutions today announced its Homeland Protection business installed twelve GE Security CTX 9000 DSi advanced baggage screening systems at Beijing Capital International Airport's (BCIA) Terminal Three as part of the city's infrastructure investment for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

GE Security's CTX 9000 advanced technology explosives detection systems are helping BCIA better protect visitors and athletes returning home after the Olympic Games. They are configured to optimally accommodate the 43 million air passengers and 170,000 flights per year for which the terminal was designed and also serve as a model for inline baggage screening systems throughout the country and region.

"GE Security is pleased to be the provider of this reliable and advanced security technology for this state of the art airport terminal that is currently supporting travelers returning home from the world's premiere sporting event," said Dennis Cooke, president and CEO, GE Security's Homeland Protection business. "This deployment of advanced explosives detection capability to Beijing Capital International Airport underscores our commitment to providing integrated, real-world security solutions that are helping protect and secure Beijing 2008 Olympic Games athletes and visitors as well as all air travelers."

"Our investment in GE's aviation security solutions is helping to make our security operations more effective, more efficient and more convenient for our passengers," said Mr. Yuan, vice president, BCIA expansion headquarters.

The GE CTX 9000 line of CT-based inline explosives detection baggage screening solutions is designed to integrate with airport baggage handling systems (BHS). The CTX 9000 system is TSA-certified and is often well suited for fast-paced airport environments.

With construction of the new Terminal Three beginning in 2004, China has invested approximately $2 billion USD to develop it as a modern gateway to accommodate increased international visitation to the Chinese capitol. The terminal's development is part of an unprecedented $40 billion USD infrastructure investment ahead of the 2008 Olympic Games, which host city Beijing anticipates to be among the most profitable and well attended of recent Games.

Designed for ease of operation and service, with multiplexing capabilities and a low false alarm rate, the CTX 9000 system can be an excellent investment for high-volume airports. Its advanced technology can assist customers to efficiently and accurately identify the most challenging threat substances.

The new Terminal Three opened to the public earlier this year. It consists of three concourses with a combined total area of some 1,000,000 square meters. Concourse C accommodates domestic and international check-in, domestic departures, and domestic and international baggage claim. Concourse D is temporarily dedicated to charter flights during the Olympic and the Paralympics Games. Concourse E is for international departures and arrivals.

About Beijing Capital International Airport

The Beijing Capital International Airport terminal officially opened on October 1, 1999, marking the 50th anniversary of Chinese Communist rule. This new, bright and airy terminal, built at a cost of $1.1 billion, is a welcome replacement for the former facility, which started operating in the 1950s, and has become increasingly cramped and dingy with the rise in the number of passengers visiting China.

The new four-story terminal (including basement level) covers an area of 336,000 square meters -- three times the size of the former terminal -- and puts much more emphasis on passenger comfort. The complex also includes a large-scale public parking building and a cargo station.

When this state-of-the-art terminal goes into full operation, it will be able to handle 190,000 flights, 35 million passengers, and 780,000 tons of cargo a year. The building has 51 elevators, 63 escalators, and 26 moving sidewalks to make moving around the airport easy.

Beijing is served by international carriers such as Northwest, United, Canadian Airlines, Lufthansa, SAS, Dragon Air, Japan Airlines, ANA, British Airways, Malaysian Air, Austrian Airlines, Air France, Alitalia, Korean Air, Pakistan Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Thai International, Air China, China Southern and China Northern.

About GE's Security Business

GE Security, Inc., a wholly owned indirect subsidiary of the General Electric Company is a leading supplier of security and life safety technologies, with operations in more than 35 countries and $1.8 billion in annual sales. GE Security offers one of the industry's broadest product portfolios, including access control, explosives detection, fire detection, intrusion, key management and surveillance. GE Security's products are used to protect people and property across a wide range of industries, including aviation, banking and finance, education, government and military, healthcare, law enforcement, residential, retail, stadiums and event venues, and transportation.

GE Security was honored with Frost & Sullivan's 2008 North American Video Surveillance Solutions Company of the Year Award for its industry leading video portfolio and integration strategy vision and execution. For more information about GE Security, please visit www.gesecurity.com.

GE Security, making the world safer.

About GE and the Olympic Games

GE is the exclusive provider of a wide range of innovative products and services that are integral to staging a successful Olympic Games. GE works closely with host countries, cities and organizing committees to provide infrastructure solutions for Olympic venues including power, lighting, water treatment, transportation and security, and to supply hospitals with ultrasound and MRI equipment to help doctors treat athletes. In addition, NBC Universal, a division of GE, is the exclusive U.S. media partner of the Olympic Games, with its partnership also extending through 2012. For more information, visit www.ge.com/olympicgames.

SOURCE: GE Security, Inc.

Edelman for GE Security
Niamh Grano, +1-202-312-8256
niamh.grano@edelman.com
or
GE Security
Steve Hill, +1-510-857-1132
steve.hill1@ge.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008

DHS Announces Aviation Security, Traveler Screening Changes

From Security Products

April 30, 2008

The Department of Homeland Security recently announced improvements aimed at strengthening aviation security while decreasing the hassle factor for travelers.

Among the key improvements, DHS is providing airlines more flexibility to allow passengers to check in remotely who have been unable to do so because they have a name similar to someone on a watch list. The department also unveiled the Checkpoint Evolution prototype, which recently began full operation at Baltimore-Washington International Airport (BWI) .

Each airline will now be able to create a system to verify and securely store a passenger’s date of birth to clear up watch list misidentifications. By voluntarily providing this limited biographical data to an airline and verifying that information once at the ticket counter, travelers that were previously inconvenienced on every trip will now be able to check-in online or at remote kiosks.

“Hassles due to misidentification and the resulting necessity to stand in line to check in at the ticket counter is consistently among the deepest -- and most valid -- complaints of the traveling public,” said Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff. “Thousands of passengers are inconvenienced each day, and this change should provide a way to eliminate the vast majority of these situations. This is good for travelers and for security, because as we make the checkpoint environment calmer, it becomes easier to spot individuals with hostile intent.”

Additionally, DHS is providing greater clarity on the types of identification that will be accepted at checkpoints in the U.S. Beginning May 26, federal or state-issued photo ID will be accepted if it contains: name, date of birth, gender, expiration date and a tamper-resistant feature. Standardizing the list of accepted documents better aligns TSA with other DHS components and REAL ID benchmarks. More information on acceptable documents is available at www.tsa.gov.

These innovations, along with the new Checkpoint Evolution prototype, are part of a broader effort to calm the checkpoint. The BWI prototype includes Millimeter Wave technology used in random continuous use, multi-view X-ray and liquid bottle scanners. These technologies, in conjunction with changes to the checkpoint environment and processes, will be evaluated for operational efficiency over the coming months.

Transportation Security Officers and managers at BWI are the first in the country to complete a 16-hour training module designed to incorporate the latest intelligence analysis, more advanced explosives detection skills, and ways to engage with passengers to promote a calmer environment for better security. The training was developed by the TSA Office of Intelligence, Bomb Appraisal Officers, and TSA Checkpoint Evolution team.

Security Under Siege at the Airport

Reprinted from CSO

Security dangers aren't always so clandestine. One of the most serious threats to your firm's security could be sitting next to you... in the airport departure lounge.

By David Michaux

October 18, 2006 — CSO —

Engineers from my company, a global security consultancy, have found documents and e-mails on public access terminals in airport departure lounges that could bring some global companies to their knees.

What began as a mixture of curiosity and boredom led consultants from our Dubai-based network security outfit to uncover a plethora of secrets left by globe-trotting executives logging on in between flights. While such senior figures possess high-level knowledge of their companies' affairs, many aren't equipped with knowledge of IT security precautions to match.

The average executive lounge offered to business and first-class flyers is equipped with a number of PCs that allow visitors open access to the Web. Each PC is installed with a standard Windows package that includes Microsoft Explorer, Outlook Express and sometimes Office.

As weary executives pull up to terminals, a sense of familiarity encourages them to behave as they would at home or in the office, and send an e-mail the same way. Why not use Outlook, just as they would at their desk?

But this could be a costly mistake.

Outlook Express is probably not configured to allow e-mails to be sent from such machines, so the correspondence simply moves to the system's outbox, where it remains indefinitely after the user clicks send. And if the system is configured to send messages, the e-mail that goes out is automatically saved to the machine's sent items folder. In either case, the message is ready for anyone to access at their leisure.

While traveling to meet clients, our engineers have found everything from intimate missives to mistresses (perfect for blackmail) to desktop-saved documents outlining multimillion-dollar deals, complete with profit margins and lowest bid values.

They also stumbled on something more sinister. Many machines, they found, are infected by Trojansor backdoor programsthat can monitor, record and relay information entered by the execs to someone watching their activities externally.

I remember a discovery I personally made while waiting for a delayed flight. As I was playing solitaire, I noticed heavy network traffic on the lounge machine's taskbar even though I wasn't using any network applications. After some delving, I was amazed to find Back Orifice 2000 (BO2K) as the culprit. It had been invisibly collecting my keystrokes and sending a record of them to a Hotmail account every 15 minutes!

I reported my findings to the lounge receptionist, who responded by explaining she couldn't take responsibility for the security of the machines.

BO2K is a well-known Trojan capable of taking full control of the machine it has infected. The perpetrator is able to view the machine's webcam, listen in on its microphone and watch a streaming video of its display, all in real-time.

Another lounge security lapse my colleagues foundthis time at a London airportallowed users to log on to machines as Administrator, meaning they could download and install any software. Again, engineers found keyloggers had been installed on systems there, configured to send information to an external e-mail account at regular intervals.

The danger is that the CEO types who travel on behalf of their companies and use these lounges are privy to unusually sensitive data. This makes computers there a veritable gold mine, whether it's executives downloading attachments from their Web mail and leaving them on the desktop, or even deleting them afterward but not emptying the recycle bin before they get up to catch their plane.

What's more, execs who do take precautions are likely to be let down by the lounge's security itself, especially if a hacker has turned its machine into listening posts.

As airport lounges increasingly offer passengers wireless Internet access, existing Trojan problems are being eliminated. But as so often happens in the world of IT security, this new era will usher in a whole new family of network malignancies.

>

Until then, I've got a plane to catch&

David Michaux is the CEO of Scanit, a home and corporate security systems company with operations in Belgium, Dubai and Iran.