ISPS Code

Until recent times, security has been the responsibility of the naval arm of the military, however, it has now been shown that every ship could be potential target of terrorism, piracy and other criminal activity and steps will have to be taken onboard each ship to reduce the possibility of being directly or indirectly an instrument of terror.

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) created a working group to develop an appropriate security code for the maritime industry. In December 2002, the IMO member governments formally adopted various security related amendments to the SOLAS Convention of 1974, including the two-part International Ships and Ports Security (ISPS) Code. The ISPS Code entered into force on 1st July 2004 for both ships and ports.

A ship security plan (SSP) which is a plan that is developed to ensure the application of measures onboard the ship is designed to protect persons onboard, cargo, cargo transport units, ship's stores or the ship form risks of a security incident.

The Flag Administrations entrust the review and approval of the SSPs to Recognised Security Organisations (RSO). Each ship to which the ISPS Code applies is subjected to verification. The verifications are also entrusted to RSOs.

When successful verification is completed then an International Ship Security Certificate is issued.

DBS auditors whose are involved in approval procedure of SSPs and verification audits on board ships have successfully passed training courses and continuously updated with trainings held within the company.

DBS Authorization Matrix shows the flag Administrations authoring DBS to carry out audits on their behalf.

Full table of DBS Authorization Matrix can be found here.

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