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Real Deal on Seals

NCJ Number
171993
Journal
Security Management Volume: 41 Issue: 9 Dated: (September 1997) Pages: 93-94,96,98,100
Author(s)
R G Johnston
Date Published
1997
Length
5 pages
Annotation
Once an organization decides to put security seals in place, it must understand seal basics and organizational objectives, choose the right seal for its application, optimize the seal's use, adequately protect the seal and seal data, provide effective training and support for seal inspectors, and assess vulnerabilities.
Abstract
Seals are tamper-indicating devices that are widely used in industry, government, and the consumer world to detect unauthorized attempts to open a container. Seals are used for various applications, including access control, records integrity, inventory, shipping integrity, theft prevention and detection, hazardous materials accountability, nuclear nonproliferation, national defense, law enforcement, customs, counterterrorism, counterespionage, and consumer product protection. The Vulnerability Assessment Team (VAT) at Los Alamos National laboratory has evaluated nearly 100 different security seals. VAT has devised and demonstrated rapid, inexpensive, low- tech ways to defeat all seals that it has evaluated; defeating a seal means gaining entry without being detected. Although VAT has shown that seals cannot guarantee that all attacks on protected property will be deterred or detected, their work has shown ways to improve seal security. The goals of seals should be periodically reviewed to ensure that they are current, clear, and appropriate. Once security needs are analyzed, security managers should choose a seal that is appropriate for the application and desired level of security. The single most critical issue in seal security is the inspection process. Seals can only detect tampering if they are regularly and carefully inspected by trained inspectors. Even inexpensive, easily defeated seals can provide a powerful psychological impediment to tampering in the minds of casual and novice adversaries. They can also focus attention on tampering concerns in the minds of security personnel, employees, and customers.