This week, APGA filed comments in response to the Transportation Security Administration’s (TSA) cyber risk management Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPRM). APGA’s members are directly impacted by the questions posed through this regulatory action. With the input, APGA wanted to make TSA aware of the policy resolution adopted by members and request that any final rule account for the following:
1. Flexibility and Scalability in Achieving Performance Objectives
2. Appropriateness and Harmonization of Reporting Requirements
3. Bi-directional Information Sharing
4. Confirmation of Information Protection
Public gas utilities are ready to partner with TSA and all government entities in the mission to inhibit attacks on our nation’s critical infrastructure. APGA members are proactively taking steps to prevent cyberattacks through complying with existing regulations and managing threats on their systems in a risk-based way, including developing assessment matrices and adding appropriate redundancies. These steps are often taken after obtaining natural gas from transmission companies, who also have well-established risk management practices. In fact, on average, only one in 800 natural gas customers experience an unplanned outage each year.
The scope of any future final regulation, which is still a way off, is to be determined and many APGA members may not be required to comply. However, it is important to provide TSA with feedback on the variety of operations within the natural gas supply chain to ensure applicability of requirements is appropriate. APGA staff thanks those members for their insight and help in drafting the response to the ANPRM and will continue to need support as this process moves on to the next step that will be a notice of proposed rulemaking (NPRM) later this year.
To see APGA’s comments,
click here.
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.