white paper health

Understanding CFATS and Its Impact upon My Business

This white paper discusses the importance of understanding the Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards (CFATS) for better implementation of process to achieve chemical security in facilities that handle, store or distribute high risk chemicals. It suggests specific strategies as to how collaboration with government agencies and technological support can help in mitigating chemical security risks, and thereby attain compliance with homeland security regulations. The white paper establishes that an integrated approach helps streamline CFATS compliance, manage security risks and reduce overall operating costs.

As a part of the nation's critical infrastructure security, the processing of chemical, its storage, distribution and transportation are issues of significant importance and much misunderstanding. The Congress has mandated specific guidelines and methodologies to assist high risk chemical facilities to assess, plan and implement a designated level of security. Interestingly, the scope of chemical security not only includes traditional chemical facilities such as chemical plants, electrical generating facilities and refineries, but has expanded to cover agricultural retailers, semiconductor manufacturers and liquefied petroleum facilities that produce, handle, or store high risk chemicals at or above a specified quantity. While chemical safety has long been a concern in the United States spurring legislative proposals from time to time, the events of September 11, 2011 triggered a nationwide re-evaluation of the security of industrial facilities that use hazardous chemicals in quantities that could potentially harm in devastating proportions in the event of a terrorist-cau...

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...ete a Security Vulnerability Assessment (SVA) to determine the likelihood that unwanted consequences can be prevented based on the security posture of the respective facility. Completed online at a DHS CSAT tool, SVA requires facilities to provide greater detail on CIOs, facility inventory, security equipment, access control procedures, and inventory shipping and receiving procedures. The submission may lead to either of three possible results: A facility could be removed from the list of high-risk facilities; the preliminary tier ranking could be confirmed; or the preliminary tier ranking could be changed. The SVA serves two purposes: To determine or confirm the placement of a facility in the risk-based tier; and to provide a baseline against which to evaluate the site security plan activities. The table below shows the number of high-risk facilities in each tier: