Customs and Border Protection plans to award Synack, Inc. a one-year contract for “Bug Bounty” services to identify and report on network vulnerabilities. The value of the pending award was redacted. CBP says that Synack has specialized capabilities in conducting vulnerability discovery on cloud service providers and is the only Bug Bounty provider pre-authorized on Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platforms. The company also provides mission-based scenario driven assessments that emulate real-world cyber-attacks, allowing CBP to pinpoint and target vulnerabilities being executed by advanced persistent threat actors.

Customs and Border Protection

has expanded the use of its Simplified Arrival facial comparison technology program at several locations, introducing the biometric-enabled system at pedestrian border crossings in Washington at the Lynden, Sumas and Point Roberts ports of entry, and at international airports in Guam and Saipan. Simplified Arrival automates the manual document checks that are required for admission to the U.S. At arrival, travelers present their travel document to a CBP officer and briefly pause for a photo that is automatically compared against their visa or passport photo that is contained in a government database after the officer reviews and queries the travel document. The agency says more than 80 million travelers have participated in Simplified Arrival and the technology, which is more than 98 percent accurate, has prevented more than 800 impostors from illegally entering the U.S.

Smiths Detection says its ultraviolet automatic tray disinfection solution is being evaluated at checkpoint lane at Paris-Charles de Gaulle airport. The company says the UVC solution is “seamlessly integrated” in an existing iLane tray return system at the airport. The UVC light kits can destroy up to 99.9 percent of microorganisms, including COVID-19, on baggage trays at the checkpoint. Separately, Smiths says that Narita International Airport in Japan has selected the company to integrate 62 advanced security checkpoints with the ultraviolet light tray disinfection equipment across three terminals by March 2022.