Athena Security’s Weapon Detection System (WDS) was designed to enhance safety and security by deterring and detecting potential threats in various environments, managing the weapon screening process, offering additional layers of security to screen for persons of interest, and providing deep analytics, incident workflows with tracking, integration with adjacent systems, and reporting. This white paper provides an overview of Athena Security’s Weapon Detection System platform and software as of June 2023, highlighting its features, benefits, underlying technologies, applications, impact on safety and security, costs, and return on investment. Athena’s WDS combines software with modular hardware components. The weapon screening conversation starts with defining the metallic threat targets, the best plane of detection (which is beyond the scope of this whitepaper and will not be discussed, though it essentially means where in the portal objects can be detected), and the appropriate tradeoffs to fit the goals of your security plan. The most popular Athena solution is the Athena Platform with the CEIA OPENGATE because it adheres to a Federal Standard. This standard ensures a baseline of detection consistency while also allowing high throughput, and is thus the setup option that is evaluated in this paper. In WDS solutions, it is important not to underestimate the need for
“Concept of Operations” (or “ConOps”) support in a screening system. ConOps includes such factors as policies, standard operating procedures, logistics, and tactics of running a screening program. This whitepaper introduces ConOps support embedded into the technology.