Recent physical attacks on substations have heightened the industry’s awareness of the necessity for physical security of critical facilities on the bulk power system. The goal of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) reliability standards is to identify and protect the physical security and cybersecurity of critical electricity infrastructure of North America.

With the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) providing conditional approval of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s new CIP-014-1: “Physical Security” reliability standard in November 2014, the standard became effective on January 26, 2015. This leaves many in the industry seeking further clarification on the technical approach and methodology required in performing vulnerability assessments to determine which stations may be worthy of further physical security measures.