ISCD Publishes CFATS Update – 3-1-21

Today the CISA Infrastructure Security Compliance Division (ISCD) updated their Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) Monthly Statistics page, providing February 2021 data on the activities of the chemical security inspectors and end-of-month status of the facilities covered by the CFATS program.

CFATS Activities

The table below shows the data for the activity of the CFATS chemical security inspectors for the last four months.

Inspection Data	Nov-20	Dec-20	Jan-21	Feb-21
Authorization Inspections	14	8	11	17
Compliance Inspections	68	35	69	97
Compliance Assistance	102	36	205	152
Compliance Audit	0	0	5	18

The total number of activities for the month are slightly down for the January, but that probably reflects the shortened month. Interestingly the Compliance Assistance activities are down significantly in favor of increasing actual inspections.

Facility Status

The table below shows the status of facilities covered by the CFATS program.

Facility Status	Nov-20	Dec-20	Jan-21	Feb-21
Tiered	85	81	103	100
Authorized	146	141	152	153
Approved	3050	3058	3037	3027
Total	3281	3280	3292	3280

The total number of facilities dropped this month, erasing the gains seen last month. Again, we do not know if the decline is due to facilities changing their operations to reduce or eliminate the volume of DHS chemicals of interest on-site, or because pf facilities reducing their inventories due to declining business. The former would be a good thing from a security perspective, the later not so much.