Review - Making ChemLock Safety Act Compliant – ChemLock Program Background

Earlier this week, in my post “CFATS is Dead” I suggested that Congress needs to authorize CISA’s ChemLock program to protect it from the budget cutters. The reason being that without the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) program, there is no broad federal program to help the chemical industry to protect itself from potential terrorist attacks. And news reports from the early morning of January 1^st reinforce the idea that terrorists still have an interest in attacking the United States.

In that earlier piece, I go on to explain, that as an incentive for chemical facilities to participate in the voluntary ChemLock program, Congress should provide in the program authorization automatic Safety Act (6 USC 441 et seq) protections for participating facilities, noting:

“The legislation authorizing the establishment of the ChemLock program could authorize DHS to declare that any facility that employs a minimum level of security measures defined under the program to have employed qualified anti-terrorism technology under the Safety Act and thus eligible for risk management and litigation management protections of the Act.”

In this series of posts, I would like to look at what that term “employs a minimum level of security measures defined under the program” could look like. Let’s start by looking at the existing ChemLock program.

ChemLock

The existing ChemLock program was established in November 2021. It provides chemical facilities with a wide range of resources to help them identify and mitigate their chemical facility security risks. These include:

ChemLock Resources,

ChemLock Exercises,

ChemLock Training, and

Special Access to Other CISA Services

But, most importantly for this discussion, ChemLock provides On-Site Assessments and Assistance. CISA’s Infrastructure Security Division notes that:

“Using CISA’s extensive knowledge of chemical security best practices, CISA chemical security personnel under the ChemLock program can provide on-site assistance and assessments that help facilities identify the specific security risks their on-site chemicals present and offer scalable, tailored suggestions for security measures that will best enhance their security posture based on their unique circumstances and business model.”

 

For more information on the current ChemLock program, including links to publications, see my article at CFSN Detailed Analysis - https://patrickcoyle.substack.com/p/making-chemlock-safety-act-compliant - subscription required.