Security: A Strategic Priority for CEA

 
CEA’s Board of Directors Strategic Plan for the Association identifies six Strategic Goals, one of which is Security:
 
Ensuring the long-term security, reliability and stability of the electricity system in Canada, considering its key role in powering other critical infrastructure sectors, is essential to the economy and quality of life.
 
CEA takes a risk-based all-hazards approach and provides members with coordination and programs to protect the Canadian electricity system from physical and cyber threats.

Reporting to the CEA Board, the Security and Infrastructure Protection (SIP) Committee, is responsible for developing and delivering security programming and policy, and reporting on progress on an ongoing basis to the Board of Directors.
 
CEA’s SIP Committee addresses:

• Physical security policy
• IT security policy issues
• Emergency preparedness

 
…from an all-hazards, all-threats perspective, coordinating the industry’s interface with Canadian federal security, intelligence and policy officials, and does so in coordination with partners in other sectors and on a continental basis through the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) CIP Committee.  CEA also supports and participates on the Conference Board of Canada’s Centre for National Security.
 
The CEA SIP Committee principal areas of focus include:
 
CIP Policy Coordination: We provide a consistent coordinated voice on security policy issues to ensure Canadian federal policy, programs and activities on Infrastructure Protection both meet the needs of the industry and are consistent with the need for a more secure infrastructure, consistent with other North American partners
 
Best Security Practices: We seek to assure physical security, IT security and emergency preparedness from an all hazards, all-threats perspective, which is increasingly complex, due to a more unsettled physical threat environment post-9/11 the more rapid and ever more complex nature of cyber threats from viruses, worms and other forms of electronic attack, and a myriad of other factors including the potential for pandemics.
 
Security Guidelines:
 
CEA is committed to a safe, secure, reliable, sustainable and competitively priced supply of electricity which is essential to Canada’s prosperity.
 
Our belief that it is in the public interest for CEA to develop guidelines that are useful for improving the safety, security and reliability of the electricity system
 
The purpose of the guidelines are to provide suggested guidance on particular topics for use by entities according to their own fact and circumstances and not to provide binding norms, establish mandatory reliability standards, or be used to monitor or enforce compliance
 
The SIP Committee has created the following Security Guidelines:
 

• Developing and Performing a Security Threat and Risk Assessment (TRA)
• Planning and Implementation of a Personnel Risk Assessment Process
• Metal Theft Guideline
• Security management System
• Protection of Information

 
For more information:
Francis Bradley
Vice President, Canadian Electricity Association
Tel:  613-230-5027
Email:  Bradley@electricity.ca