Review - OCS Publishes CFATS Monthly Update – 3-4-22

On Friday, CISA’s Office of Chemical Security updated their CFATS Monthly Statistic page, providing updated information on the activities conducted by their chemical security inspectors (CSI) during the month of February and the status of facilities covered by the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program at the end of the month. There was a significant increase in in CSI activities and the number of covered facilities.

Next year, the CFATS program comes up for reauthorization. This means that congressional committees are going to start looking at the CFATS program in more detail, probably later this year. I would like to see one of the three chairs with oversight responsibilities request a GAO report on the details of these reported statistics. OCS is doing a good job of keeping us updated on these numbers, but there are a number of details that are missing, most of them quite legitimately from an operations security perspective. But the GAO has the necessary tools and experience to dig into the statistical databases as well as interview government employees and affected private sector companies to be able to give us an overall picture of the movement of facilities into, through and out of the CFATS program. Such a review would be informative for the reauthorization process.

For a more detailed look at the recent numbers and their historical perspective, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/ocs-publishes-cfats-monthly-update-662 - subscription required.