TSA Revises and Reissues Cybersecurity Requirements for Pipeline Owners and Operators

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The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) announced the revision and reissuance of its Security Directive regarding oil and natural gas pipeline cybersecurity. This revised directive will continue the effort to build cybersecurity resiliency for the nation’s critical pipelines.

Developed with extensive input from industry stakeholders and federal partners, including the Department’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), the reissued security directive for critical pipeline companies follows the directive announced in July 2021. The directive extends cybersecurity requirements for another year and focuses on performance-based – rather than prescriptive – measures to achieve critical cybersecurity outcomes.

“TSA is committed to keeping the nation’s transportation systems safe from cyberattacks. This revised security directive follows significant collaboration between TSA and the oil and natural gas pipeline industry. The directive establishes a new model that accommodates variance in systems and operations to meet our security requirements,” said TSA Administrator David Pekoske. “We recognize that every company is different, and we have developed an approach that accommodates that fact, supported by continuous monitoring and auditing to assess achievement of the needed cybersecurity outcomes. We will continue working with our partners in the transportation sector to increase cybersecurity resilience throughout the system and acknowledge the significant work over the past year to protect this critical infrastructure.”

Following the May 2021 ransomware attack on a major pipeline, TSA issued several security directives mandating that critical pipeline owners and operators implement several urgently needed cybersecurity measures. In the fourteen months since this attack, the threat posed to this sector has evolved and intensified. Reducing this national security risk requires significant public and private collaboration.

To view TSA’s security directives and guidance documents, please visit the TSA Cybersecurity Toolkit.