Electricity Today T&D Magazine

U.S. regulator takes next step in approving physical security standard

BY PHILL FELTHAM, Editor-in-Chief
Electricity Today Magazine

Recently, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) announced a proposal to approve the physical security reliability standard (CIP-014-1), submitted by the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) earlier in the year. This physical security standard is currently being developed in response to an armed assault that occurred on a California substation in early 2013.

Initially, FERC determined that NERC’s current critical infrastructure protection (CIP) standards lacked specifics for entities to “reasonably protect” their infrastructure against physical attacks that could adversely affect power grid reliability. As a result, FERC requested NERC to develop and submit new standards that, according to a news release, “identify critical facilities; evaluate potential threats to, and vulnerabilities of, those facilities; and develop and implement a security plan to protect against attacks on those facilities”.

Approval of the new reliability...