August 1, 2007 — The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) recently proposed to approve a set of reliability standards to help safeguard the nation’s bulk electric power supply system against potential disruptions from cyber attacks.
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) developed the proposed reliability standards and submitted them to the Commission for approval on August 28, 2006. In December 2006, Commission staff issued a preliminary analysis of the cyber security reliability standards, and allowed for public comment. In the July 19 Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NOPR), the Commission proposes to approve the eight cyber security reliability standards. The NOPR also calls for NERC to develop modifications to address specific concerns identified by the Commission.
The proposed standards require certain users, owners and operators of the grid to establish plans, protocols and controls to safeguard physical and electronic access to systems, to train personnel on security matters, to report security incidents, and to be prepared to recover information.
For more information, see the FERC Web site.
