Review - 2021 Chemical Security Seminars – ChemLock Breakout Session

Today was the first day of the three weekly Chemical Security Seminars that are once again taking the place of the annual Chemical Security Summit because of the health restrictions related to Covid 19. Because of other commitments I was only able to make one of today’s virtual sessions, so I selected the Voluntary Chemical Security Initiatives presentation by CISA’s Annie Hunziker Boyer. This was the first public presentation about the new ChemLock program.

Sometime next month the CISA folks will publish the slides from all of today’s presentations, including the ChemLock slides. I will provide links when they become available. The highlight’s of today’s presentation included:

• ChemLock Background,

• Four Pillars of ChemLock,

• ChemLock and CFATS, and

• The Future of ChemLock

Program Note: CISA has a new version of the ‘preliminary’ agenda for the Seminars. It provides a more detailed description of the presentations. The next seminar is on December 8^th, 2021. Two interesting looking cybersecurity presentations.

Moving Forward

I think that this program is an exciting next step for the folks at OCS. I will be digging into the web site and associated documents in the same way that I have been looking at the CFATS program over the years. At this point, however, it looks like a win-win situation for facilities. Even if a facility does little more that request an assistance visit to see if they have security issues that need addressing, the ChemLock program could provide facility management with a leg up on improving their security posture.

While this is a ‘free program’ in that CISA is providing assistance and information at no cost to the facility, security programs are never free. Effective security is resource intensive, getting help from people who have been dealing with chemical facility security for more than a decade could be a resource multiplier.

For more details about what I heard today and how I think that applies to folks in the chemical facility security field, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/2021-chemical-security-seminars - subscription required.