Version 5 of the NERC Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) was released for comment and vote in December. The results of the voting have been released and the standard updates failed to receive the necessary votes to pass. The voting results can be viewed and downloaded here.
Honeywell's Tom Alrich, who has been working closely with this process, commented, "The only positive vote of greater than 40% was for the implementation plan. CIP-003 and CIP-008 got between 30 and 40% positive votes. Everything else got under 30% positive. In addition, participation was quite high - over 90% for each ballot." Mr. Alrich notes that the Standard Development Team is working on changes that will increase the likelihood of ratification in the next vote.
Version 3 of the NERC CIP standards are in place now, with version 4 approved and waiting implementation. Some industry professionals hoped that version 5 would be approved quickly so that implementation of procedures to comply with version 4 would not be necessary. The failed vote brings this possibility in question.
