July 29 is the 10th anniversary of congressional approval of the Energy Policy Act of 2005, a key event in the genesis of the NERC CIP Reliability Standards. To mark this anniversary, let’s take a look back at the history of NERC and Critical Infrastructure Protection.
The Electric Reliability Act of 1967 was developed by congress in response to the Northeast blackout of 1965. It called for the creation of power coordination organization to help prevent cascading outages. Although the legislation was not enacted, it lead to the formation of NERC, which was originally named North American Electric Reliability Council. NERC had no regulator authority, but developed policies with which compliance was voluntary.
The concept of Critical Infrastructure Protection developed in the late 1990’s. Bill Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive/NSC-63 of May 1998,which defined critical infrastructures as “Those physical and cyber-based systems essential to the minimum operations of the economy and government. They include, but are not limited to, telecommunications, energy, banking and finance, transportation, water systems and emergency services, both governmental and private.”
In December 2003, President Bush re-enforced the US commitment to CIP with Homeland Security Presidential Directive HSPD-7 for Critical Infrastructure Identification, Prioritization, and Protection.
Finally, the Energy Policy Act of 2005 was passed by Congress on July 29, 2005, and signed into law by George W. Bush on August 8, 2005. This legislation directed FERC to designate an Electric Reliability Organization to develop reliability standards, including cyber security standards. FERC designated NERC as the reliability organization, the NERC voluntary policies were replace by mandatory standards and the NERC CIP cyber security requirements were born.
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