There’s no public application for TSA’s Known Shipper Management System, and that trips up more shippers than you’d expect. If your business moves freight on passenger aircraft, understanding how the system works, and what TSA is proposing to change about it, matters more than ever.
What Is the Known Shipper Management System?
The Known Shipper Management System (KSMS) is how TSA identifies and approves shippers to move cargo on passenger aircraft. There’s no portal for shippers to apply directly. Instead, indirect air carriers, aircraft operators, and foreign air carriers vet and qualify their own clients under their TSA-approved security programs, then submit that vetting through KSMS.
For freight forwarders, that means the relationship with your transportation partner is the whole process. If a shipper isn’t in the system, their cargo moves on all-cargo aircraft only, with fewer routing options and often a higher price tag.
Proposed Updates to the IACSSP and CCSSSP
TSA has notified the air cargo community that it intends to update two of the programs that govern this whole process: the Indirect Air Carrier Standard Security Program (IACSSP) and the Certified Cargo Screening Standard Security Program (CCSSSP). The proposed changes touch who needs a Security Threat Assessment, when a customer counts as a “shipper” under the program, whether IACs can keep using designated pickup locations, and cybersecurity reporting requirements.
The specifics are classified as Sensitive Security Information, so TSA isn’t publishing the details, but the agency has posted notice of the changes to the Indirect Air Carrier Management System (IACMS) for review. There’s no formal timeline yet for when TSA will finalize and reissue the updated programs.
Why this matters to forwarders: the Airforwarders Association has already submitted formal member comments on the proposed changes, flagging concerns specifically around the Known Shipper and cargo acceptance provisions.
TSA’s Broader Horizon 25 Strategy
The IACSSP and CCSSSP updates demonstrate a larger shift at TSA. In August, Administrator David P. Cummins launched the agency’s Horizon 25 Strategy ahead of TSA’s 25th anniversary, built around three goals:
- Modernizing checkpoints
- Improving the passenger experience
- Hardening security across multiple transportation modes
Horizon 25 is aimed primarily at passenger screening, including an evolved Screening Partnership Program replacing TSA’s Gold+ initiative and a bigger role for private-sector partnerships in modernization. It’s not a cargo-specific program, but it signals the direction TSA is heading agency-wide, and cargo stakeholders should expect that same modernization push to keep showing up in cargo security policy too.
The Takeaway
Nothing in KSMS, the IACSSP, or the CCSSSP is finalized yet, but the direction is clear enough to plan around. Forwarders and IACs should keep an eye on the IACMS for the formal notice and talk to their transportation partners about how proposed changes to shipper definitions and pickup locations might affect current accounts.
AirCargo 2027 brings together the forwarders, carriers, airports, airlines and association leaders working through these critical questions. Join us in Dallas for the conversations that keep your compliance ahead of the regulations.
