ISCD Publishes Updated CSAT 2.0 Manuals

Earlier this week the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) published links to the latest version of their Chemical Security Assessment Tool (CSAT 2.0) manuals on the CFATS Knowledge Center page. There was no formal announcement; they just changed the ‘updated’ date shown in the Documentation section of the page. The links pages accessed from the CSAT web site were also changed to provide links to the version 2.0.11 copies of the following manuals:

• CSAT 2.0 Portal User Manual;

• CSAT 2.0 Survey Application User Manual;

• CSAT 2.0 Top Screen Instructions; and

• CSAT 2.0 Security Vulnerability / Site Security Plan Instructions

There are no major changes in the new manuals. According to Annie Hunziker at ISCD: “Since the new Top-Screen was initially issued, DHS has made a few small adjustments where the wording of questions was causing confusion and misreporting, and has removed some questions that were creating confusion and not generating useful, consistent data appropriate for use in the tiering methodology.”

My only complaint is that there is no change documentation in the new manuals. Hunziker tells me that: “The changes are listed where facilities can see them in the release notes under the CSAT 2.0 help tab.”

While these are not supposed to be substantive changes, CFATS covered facilities and security contractors are going to want to ensure that they have the most updated copies of these manuals on hand.