The ISPS Code or International Ship and Port Facility Security Code is a unique piece of international legislation which came into being unusually swiftly in response to the 9.11 attack on the Twin Towers. Independent Maritime Security Associates (IMSA Ltd) is proud to have been associated with it since its inception and the company’s directors not only helped to draft and bring it into law, but also with a number of Associates, did many of the initial inspections and surveys of ships and ports the world over that the ISPS Code was asking for. The company’s trainers have been active too since the earliest days, training Company and Ship Security Officers (CSOs and SSOs) and still enjoy a high turn-over of students.

The objectives of the Code are:

• to establish an international framework involving co-operation between Contracting Governments, Government agencies, local administrations and the shipping and port industries to detect and assess security threats and take preventive measures against security incidents affecting ships or port facilities used in inernational trade;
• to establish the effective roles and responsibilities of all these parties concerned , at the national and international level, for ensuring maritime security;
• to ensure the early and efficient collation and exchange of security-related information;
• to provide a methodology for security assessmens so as to have in place plans and procedures to react to changing security levels; and
• to ensure confidence that adequate and proportionate maritime security measures are in place.

These objectives are achieved by the designation of appropriate officers and people on each ship, in each port facility and in each shipping company to prepare and to put into effect the security plans that are approved for each ship and port facility.

The rationale for the ISPS Code was that 9.11 carried out against a land-based target was only the beginning of a possible range of attacks against developed world organisations and practices. The carriage of world trade underpinning the functioning of the world’s economy was judged to be at risk from terrorist attack and thus security of ships and ports needed to be addressed.

In the ensuing 7 years since the ISPS Code came into force, the measures it has imposed on the shipping and ports industries has clearly had not only a deterrent effect in preventing large-scale terrorist attacks, but has also improved the standard of operating efficiencies in the areas where ISPS Code measures have been adopted.

The ISPS Code has also lent itself to the threat that has arisen during its life-time – that of piracy. IMSA Ltd was quick to identify that the ship or port that wholeheartedly and pragmatically embraces the ISPS Code, is already well prepared to tackle the added burden of transiting and operating in piracy-prone waters. All of IMSA Ltd’s anti-piracy training and provision uses the ISPS Code as its starting-point, and the Code has given the company’s product a legitimacy and logic often not found in the products of other maritime security providers.

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