Complementing the ACI/IATA efforts, FLYSEC project aims to develop and demonstrate an innovative integrated and end-to-end airport security process for passengers, enabling a guided and streamlined procedure from the landside to airside and into the boarding gates, and offering for the first time an operationally validated innovative concept for end-to-end aviation security. On the technical side, FLYSEC achieves its ambitious goals by integrating new technologies on video surveillance, intelligent remote image processing and biometrics combined with big data analysis, open-source intelligence and crowdsourcing. Repurposing existing technologies is also in the FLYSEC objectives, such as mobile application technologies for improved passenger experience and positive boarding applications (i.e. services to facilitate boarding and landside/airside wayfinding) as well as RFID for carry-on luggage tracking and quick unattended luggage handling. Besides more efficient background checks and passenger profiling, FLYSEC aims to implement a seamless risk-based security process within FLYSEC combining the aforementioned technologies with behavioural analysis and innovative cognitive algorithms. A key aspect in the design of FLYSEC risk-based security is applying ethical-by-design patterns, maximizing the efficiency of security controls through passenger differentiation ranging from “unknown” to “trusted”, while remaining ethical and fair in the process. Policy, regulatory and standardisation aspects will also be examined in the context of FLYSEC innovative security concept.

Identity theft is rapidly expanding, causing substantial financial loss to millions of people all around the world. This invisible crime is also widespread across EU countries, where a growing number of citizens is targeted by sophisticated fraudulent attacks each year, both offline and online. 56% of Europeans have experienced at least one type of fraud in the last two years. European security officials speak of an “epidemic” created by a spike in demand from asylum-seekers and from terrorists carrying counterfeit documents to enter the EU. Security documents are increasingly being counterfeited or tampered with by criminals to facilitate transnational crime. The continued vulnerability of different types of identity and travel documents makes it extremely difficult to combat this problem. SafeTravellers value proposition aims at a) strengthening the security at the borders, b) improving the productivity of the Border Authorities and LEAs by providing them with the appropriate tools to combat identity fraud at the hardware, identity and travel document, and biometrics level, while c) offering a frictionless border crossing experience for EU/TCN citizens as they will not have to stop at the border checkpoints. SafeTravellers is both proposing a new way of citizen identification based on multiple biometrics instead of the problematic identity document, as well as an enhancement of the current way of identity verification at the borders through a set of tools that will detect attacks at the biometric hardware, identity and travel document fraud and attempts to falsify biometrics. The proposed solution is GDPR compliant and introduces various privacy-preserving mechanisms to safeguard the citizens' rights. Through the distributed European Multi-Biometric Data Space offered by SafeTravellers, each Member State will keep in its jurisdiction the personal data of its country nationals while allowing cross-border identity checks without transferring or revealing any biometric data.