Does Your Substation Security Program Make The Grade?
Assess security procedures at substations and make needed changes to help provide your community with a safe and secure source of electrical energy.
Although electrical substations are in many ways the “neuron” of your electrical network, allowing effective monitoring and control of electric energy in a particular area, they are attended for very short periods of time. Unlike control centers and most power plants that are staffed around the clock, there is typically no staffing and limited or no roving security patrols. Therefore, it is important that security policies or procedures are in place to manage and control access into and out of critical substations.
Evaluate Your Substation Security Program
Answer the following questions to determine if your substation security program is up to the standards defined by the National Electric Reliability Council:
- Does your substation security policy clearly define roles, responsibilities and procedures for access and is it part of an overall critical infrastructure protection policy?
- Are all physical access points through each perimeter clearly identified and documented?
- Are physical access controls implemented at each identified perimeter access point?
- Is access into and out of critical substations monitored with security personnel and/or electronic authorization?
- Do you have records that identify all contractors, vendors and service personnel who have unescorted access privileges to substations?
- Do you require all contractors and vendors with critical substation access privileges to pass a background screening before being issued an entity-provided contractor ID badge?
- Do you have a substation incident response program that, at a minimum, would provide a rapid assessment of events in the substation in order to differentiate normal electromechanical failures from malicious acts?
- Do you eliminate or restrict the use of the substation secure area for noncritical activities such as equipment storage, noncritical asset storage, contractor staging and personal vehicle parking?
If you answered “yes” to all of the questions, you are operating with a consistent “systems approach” to protecting critical assets. EMC loss control experts suggest prioritizing substations based on factors such as prior history of incidents, threat warnings from law enforcement agencies, loss of load consequences, response time, recovery time and overall operating requirements. Then, inspect and assess existing security policies at substations and make appropriate changes to help provide your community with a safe and secure source of electrical energy.
