Amit Shah inaugurates centralised security control centre for 66 airports under CISF cover

The CISF provides armed security cover to 66 airports as part of its aviation security group and the force works under the command of the Union home ministry.

Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday inaugurated a centralised aviation security control centre here that will monitor all threats and social media chatter for the 66 civil airports currently under the CISF's security cover.

The aviation security control centre (ASCC) will access "24x7 real-time data monitoring and trend analysis of passengers and air traffic", the force said in a statement.

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The Central Industrial Security Force (CISF) is the national civil aviation protection force. It guards 66 passenger airports out of the total 134 operational in the country.

The paramilitary force said the ASCC is equipped with cutting-edge technologies such as a data centre, research and development lab and a war room to deal with emergencies.

The centre will get real-time feed from each of the security operations control centres (SOCCs) operational at these 66 airports that include the "extremely busy and hyper-sensitive" civil aviation facilities in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Jammu, Srinagar and Amritsar among others.

"Over a period of time, due to increased air traffic and passenger load, current security scenario, evolving nature of threat perceptions and geographical spread of airports across the country, a need was felt for centralised monitoring of incident/events occurring at airports to resolve them on a real-time basis," the CISF said, explaining the rationale behind setting up the centre.

As per the force, the facility will provide "realistic" inputs about passenger traffic at a given point in time and help in mobilising the resources for "optimum utilisation".

It will also monitor bomb threat calls, VVIP movements, other major incidents, passenger clearance time, utilisation of security gadgets and queue management systems among others at the 66 airports, the force said.

A technical laboratory created at the centre will prepare trend analysis of real-time data to enhance the effectiveness of decision-making at higher levels and will undertake research on advanced and artificial intelligence-based aviation security equipment available worldwide, comparative analysis of different equipment and its applicability at Indian airports, it said.

The ASCC will also provide resolution of social media by monitoring popular platforms and will have two-way communication with all airport units of the CISF, external agencies and stakeholders "for better coordination and cooperation".

Its data centre will have a storage capacity of 300 TB (terabyte), a 50 Mbps Lease line from MTNL and an IP-PBX (to make and receive calls over the Internet) with a capacity of 110 intercom telephone connections for airports, the CISF headquarters and other offices of the force, the statement said.

The CISF provides armed security cover to 66 airports as part of its aviation security group (ASG) and the force works under the command of the Union home ministry.