Sareth Neak, President & Publisher, Maritime Security Outlook

Seaports, coastal installations and offshore platforms are critical to the vitality of our nation.  However, by their very nature, for short amounts of time, seaports temporarily concentrate vast portions of the wealth of our economy into small areas and constrict the movement of that wealth through narrow portals.  Because of this, the people, policies, procedures and technology which predict, detect, prevent and mitigate loss due to a destructive event are critical to the safety and health of our nation.  This opening statement is no great revelation to anyone in the maritime industry.  In fact, everything from NSPD-41/HSPD-13 right down to specific Port Facility Security Plans acknowledge this fact of life. 

Over the next few months we will publish a series of articles that review the threats, examine the vulnerabilities, define the most obvious consequences and examine the role of technology in the prediction, detection, prevention and mitigation of loss due to a destructive event.  We hope you find this series informative and we wish for you to interact with us throughout the series.  To this end, we are spacing the articles two weeks apart in order to give you a chance to respond to each article and help shape the remainder of the series. 

We apologize for the delay in the publishing of the first article.  We hope to have it available shortly.  Thank you.