PASS is about developing a corporate culture which integrates product security and supply chain security management into overall quality objectives to make sure customers receive genuine and safe products

The Product Authentication + Security Summit (PASS) will help brand owners and other manufacturers understand the broad issues of product security and – more critically – to devise and implement product security programs.

The interrelated issues of counterfeiting, sabotage, diversion, and theft threaten the genuine and safe delivery of products. Companies are easy prey to product fraud when they lack effective product security strategies, processes, controls, and methods to ensure transparency in their supply chains. Companies are also easy prey to saboteurs for the same reasons. Without tools and methods to monitor and control distribution, diverters will contaminate the supply chain with fake, stolen, expired, and spoiled products.

In addition to creating potential health and safety incidents, fake, expired, damaged, and reworked products harm brand image and create consumer trust issues which can damage sales.

Authentication is the starting point for any effective product security program. Effective authentication aids the prevention, detection and control of product fraud. Effective supply chain security and monitoring ensures that products arrive at customers’ receiving warehouses without theft, contamination, or sabotage. 

PASS has a new model for its program: The first session provides an overview of product security issues and solutions, with each of the following sessions focusing on three specific at-risk product groups: fashion and footwear, electricals and electronics, and fast-moving consumer goods including self-medication. Speakers in each session are drawn from brand owners, solutions providers and industry associations and specialists to give a balanced picture of how individual companies in each field can improve their product security strategies.

Reconnaissance International events have a pattern of inclusiveness for industry stakeholders. PASS is the place where researchers, regulators, law enforcement, investigators, attorneys, brand owners, authentication suppliers, supply chain specialists, asset tracking providers, insurers, and transportation companies can come together to share experience and develop solutions to product security problems.

Reconnaissance has a respected track record in creating meetings built around the key topical issues for the participants and which deliver relevant, valuable information and guidance. PASS expands on the Authentications Connections Forum (ACF), Reconnaissance’s leading anti-counterfeiting event, to include strategies and solutions for illicit diversion, warranty fraud, cargo theft, and other product security issues. This development follows brand owners’ requests to help them see authentication in the context of the many different types of product security threats beyond counterfeiting.