ISCD Updates Two Fact Sheets

Yesterday the DHS Infrastructure Security Compliance Division updated their Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) Knowledge Center. One ‘latest news’ item announced the publication of two updated CFATS fact sheets. A second item talked about the upcoming regional meeting. And, finally, ISCD re-did the ‘Documentation’ section, providing links to the above items and eliminating many of the outdated documents that had been accumulating in the section.

Fact Sheets

The two updated fact sheets dealt with Risk Based Performance Standard (RBPS) #9 (Response) and the Infrastructure Protection (IP) Gateway. The RBPS 9 fact sheet was originally published last July. The IP Gateway fact sheet was older, being originally published in 2015.

The changes to the RBPS 9 fact sheet are relatively minor. In the opening paragraph they clarified that the CFATS program was designed to ensure security measures were in place to protect against “hazardous chemicals being exploited in a terrorist attack” rather than to “reduce the risks associated with their chemicals”. The second change was to add a bullet point about the IP Gateway in the discussion about DHS compliance assistance and outreach.

The IP Gateway fact sheet, on the other hand, under went a complete re-write. The fact sheet explains that the IP Gateway was established as part of the Obama Administration’s efforts under EO 13650, Improving Chemical Facility Safety and Security. It was established to help share chemical safety and security information from federal agencies (like ISCD) with other Federal, State, local and tribal government agencies.

The revised fact sheet does a better job of explaining both what CFATS facility information is shared with these government agencies and how that information is required to be protected by those agencies. One important part of the revision is a link to a web site that provides even more information about the IP Gateway Program.

Regional Meeting

The brief news item on the West Regional Meeting that I have been discussing for the last week or so (most recently here). There is little new information either in the news entry or in the new flyer linked to in the Documentation section. ISCD is, however, using the CFATS Knowledge Center as an additional way to reach out to facilities to ensure that they know about their DHSChemSecurityTalks program.

Documents Section Update

I have not mentioned it (because I am an information junky) but the Documentation section of the CFATS Knowledge Center has become rather bloated over the last year or so. Part of this is because ISCD has been actively working to ensure that they are communicating with the regulated (and potentially regulated) community and has been producing a large number of outreach documents. Unfortunately, part of the bloat has also been because of a failure to routinely purge the section of outdated materials. Yesterday that purge was done. Things like old monthly update notices were removed from the section. Even with the addition of the three new products mentioned above, the total number of documents listed in the Section went from 69 down to 54. There are still plenty of informative documents listed on the site.

Interestingly, it seems that removal of the document listings does not mean that the documents have been removed from the web site. There is at least one old monthly update for which the old link still works; at least as of this morning.