Standards for a Nonstandard Industry

This paper will address recent efforts by the Department of Energy (DOE) to develop standards related to physical security. Physical security is a nonstandardized industry, with standards only beginning to be developed. Even where there are security standards, few means of product and system certification exist; compare this to safety where an Underwriters' Laboratories (UL) certification mark is considered a must. As a result, security products and systems performance often prove unsatisfactory. Efforts are underway at Sandia National Laboratories to develop performance testing standards for physical security systems and to establish a means of certification against those and other related standards. This should make physical protection more cost effective and of higher reliability in the Department of Energy and elsewhere. This paper will briefly describe the problem as well as the background of the DOE standardization initiative, give a brief glimpse into both standardization and certification, describe Sandia's activities in this regard, list basic principles of standardization, discuss the relevant players in US standardization, and describe how standards can help solve some of the physical security problems.