Aker Improves UK Border Security by Closing Rail & Maritime Information Gaps

The Client

The Home Office is one of the UK’s largest and most complex government departments, responsible for protecting the public, securing the UK border, and upholding national security. As part of this mission, the Home Office must receive and analyse passenger data, in advance of their planned travel to the UK, across all modes of transport to identify, assess, and mitigate security threats.

The Home Office operates critical data gateways that support border security and the efficient movement of people and goods, in line with the Home Office Digital, Data and Technology Strategy 2024.

To enable pre-travel security threat assessments for the rail and maritime modes of transport, the Home Office focuses on:

• Establishing secure, reliable data exchange with rail and maritime carriers to increase upstream visibility and reduce information gaps.
• ‍Sustaining critical maritime services at major roll-on/roll-off ports, ensuring operational continuity during peaks and disruption.
• ‍Combining and analysing multiple datasets to strengthen border intelligence, improving targeting of both people and freight.

The Challenge

The UK threat level within the Rail and Maritime (R&M) sector was classified as SEVERE by JTAC. Despite this elevated risk, the Home Office lacked a resilient, scalable mechanism for secure data sharing with rail and maritime operators.

Previous programmes had failed to deliver a sustainable solution, leaving:

• No unified, IS72-compliant data acquisition capability for rail and maritime
• Inability to reliably ingest advance passenger information in a timely manner
• Fragmented, ageing legacy systems lacking resilience and interoperability, requiring urgent system modernisation.
• Limited integration and interoperability into existing border risking and targeting systems

The Home Office required more than a gateway - it needed a secure data platform built on zero trust architecture, capable of supporting high-volume ingestion, real-time processing, and integration with national targeting systems.

These gaps reduced visibility across key entry points to the UK and constrained the Home Office’s ability to respond effectively to evolving threats.

The Solution

Aker Systems designed, built, and operated a modern secure data platform - the Rail & Maritime Carrier Data Gateway - enabling reliable, policy-driven secure data sharing between Rail & Maritime carriers and the Home Office.

The solution delivered:

·       A resilient, scalable data streaming architecture supporting high-volume, real-time ingestion

·       A hardened cloud foundation aligned to government-grade security

·       Integration and interoperability into existing Home Office real-time data pipelines and intelligence systems

·       A fully managed service operating within a regulated cloud migration context

·       Built-in policy-as-code controls enforcing data quality and IS72 compliance

Aker applied proven accelerators from previous critical data infrastructure programmes to deliver a production-ready platform at pace, using agile delivery with embedded secure data engineering practices.

The outcome was a sustainable, interoperable, future-ready data platform, capable of supporting evolving regulatory, operational, and intelligence requirements.

The Technology

The Home Office Rail & Maritime Carrier Data Gateway, designed and operated by Aker Systems, provides a secure, scalable, and future-ready foundation for real-time data sharing and analytics across government.

Key Technology Foundations

·      Built on an AWS-managed Kubernetes platform, with additional AWS services hosted in the UK region to ensure data sovereignty.

·      Core Java Spring application components, leveraging open-source tooling such as Kafka Connect.

·      An event-driven architecture is implemented using Amazon MSK and Kafka Streams, with Avro schemas managed through Confluent Schema Registry.

·      Data processing and integration are handled through Amazon Glue, with metadata managed in the Glue Data Catalog.

·      Persistent storage uses AWS RDS (PostgreSQL) for configuration data and Amazon S3 for scalable file storage, with Parquet used for large datasets and Avro for message-level data.

·      Operational monitoring and logging are supported through Sysdig and the ELK stack.

The Value

“Thank you for the business analysis and technical skill involved in the implementation of the rail and maritime solution. It was implemented quickly & without issue.”

— Rachael Hoggarth, Assistant Director, National Border Targeting Centre

The Home Office Rail & Maritime Carrier Data Gateway was successfully delivered in under 9 months as a mission-critical data modernisation programme, significantly strengthening UK border security through improved data visibility and compliance.

The new platform delivered measurable and lasting improvements:

• UK border security significantly strengthened through improved data visibility
• A compliant, scalable solution delivered on time and on budget
• Carrier confidence restored through reliable connectivity and clear engagement
• Converged and decommissioned multiple legacy systems
• A sustainable operational model supporting future growth and regulatory change

This delivery demonstrates how regulated organisations can modernise legacy gateways into secure, real-time data platforms - improving compliance, resilience, and operational visibility across complex ecosystems.

In summary, Aker delivered for the Home Office a secure, government-grade, real-time data exchange platform that replaced fragmented legacy gateways, restored carrier confidence, and strengthened UK border security through improved visibility and compliance.