APGA Participates in October ONG SCC Meeting

By Stuart Saulters posted 10-28-2021 11:20 AM

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On October 20 and 21, APGA staff participated in the fall meeting of the Oil and Natural Gas Subsector Coordinating Council (ONG SCC). On the first day, just a few representatives from oil and natural gas companies, as well as staff from the major trade associations in this sector met online; and on the next day, the ONG SCC participated in a virtual meeting with security personnel within President Biden’s Department of Energy (DOE) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The ONG SCC represents the industry interests of oil and natural gas companies in a government-industry partnership. It provides a forum to coordinate activities across the sector to support America’s homeland security mission.

There has been a lot of activity in the cyber security space recently, so the event was very timely. Pipeline operators are still working to comply with the new Security Directives issued by the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), which is a division of DHS. TSA has classified these new rules as sensitive security information (SSI), but a redacted version is available if members want to contact APGA staff for a copy. Below is a public statement from TSA that provides some detail:

This Security Directive requires owners and operators of TSA-designated critical pipelines to implement specific mitigation measures to protect against ransomware attacks and other known threats to information technology and operational technology systems, develop and implement a cybersecurity contingency and recovery plan, and conduct a cybersecurity architecture design review.

In addition to discussion describing all the challenges with the new Security Directives, APGA staff also joined with other industry stakeholders on the ONG SCC to discuss a new effort coming from the National Security Council (NSC). This initiative will partner the federal government with certain critical facility operators to monitor industrial control systems (ICS) and report back on incidents. With both these items, hopefully, the federal government partners will take the input provided and further clarify, as a little more practicality is needed.

With any new developments, APGA staff will be working with the Security Task Group regarding these.

For questions on this article, please contact Stuart Saulters of APGA staff by phone at 202-544-1334 or by email at ssaulters@apga.org.

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