What is the EMP Resilience Report?

The EMP Resilience & Protection Guidelines for Critical Infrastructure and Equipment report that was release on February 5th of 2019 is essentially a document that provides guidelines to assist federal, state, and local officials and critical infrastructure owners and operators to protect mission essential equipment against electromagnetic pulse (EMP) threats. It was created to help fulfill the Secretary of Homeland Security’s responsibilities to:

•  Provide strategic guidance, promote a national unity of effort, and coordinate the overall Federal effort to promote the security and resilience of the Nation’s critical infrastructure. [Presidential Policy Directive 21 – Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience]

•  Ensure the necessary combination of hardness, redundancy, … to obtain, to the maximum extent practicable, the survivability of NS/EP {national security/emergency preparedness} communications [Executive Order 13618, Assignment of National Security and Emergency Preparedness Communications Functions]

•  Be the focal point within the Federal Government for all EMP technical data and studies concerning telecommunications. [Title 47 Part 215 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR)

The 133-page document is essentially a response to the to the U.S. Congressional EMP Commission’s recommendation that the “Department of Homeland Security should play a leading role in spreading knowledge of the nature of prudent mitigation preparations for EMP attack to mitigate its consequences.

What does this report tell us and how do we use it?

This declassified report is primarily a guideline that breaks down the 4 Levels of EMP Protection recommended by the National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center of Arlington, Virginia.  An individual concerned with protecting their home, business or loved ones would be wise to study and understand the listed tables within the report and begin working on personal safeguards to try and achieve the highest level of protection available to them.  For instance, on page B-6 of the report they lists EMP Shield LLC and its EMP Shield device as a means of Energy Filtration and Suppression!

Let’s take a brief look at the 4 Levels of recommended protection:

Level 1 begins with low-cost methods and best practices to help protect critical infrastructure from severe damage. An important aspect of Level 1 protection is ensuring that personnel have backup power and the food, water, and other essential supplies needed to operate and maintain their mission-critical systems, given that normal services and supply chains are likely to be disrupted in some reasonable scenarios for a week (or longer).

Level 2 guidelines are based on using EMP-capable filters and surge arresters on power cords, antenna lines, and data cables, as well as installing fiber optics and ferrites, where possible, to protect critical equipment. These will mitigate the majority of EMP equipment vulnerabilities when EMP facility shielding is not feasible and are expected to be the most cost-effective approach for hardening limited equipment in facilities. Levels 1 and 2 are for organizations where days or hours of mission interruptions can be tolerated and for which “cost to harden” is a critical factor. Level 3 guidelines are appropriate for organizations, facilities, and systems that cannot tolerate more than a few minutes of mission outage due to EMP, in order to effectively protect life, health, and security. The International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) EMP and IEMI protection standards (IEC SC 77C series, see Appendix F), serve as the foundation for planning and protecting critical infrastructures and equipment that are in this category. For EMP Protection Levels 3 (and 4), electromagnetically shielded racks and rooms are used to prevent electromagnetic (EM) fields and currents from reaching mission critical equipment.

Level 3 specifies shielding against high frequency EMP should provide at least 30 dB of protection through 10 GHz (in other words, the EMP field strength should be attenuated by a factor of at least 97% by the shielding).

Level 4 guidelines are for organizations/missions/systems that cannot tolerate more than a few seconds of outage and where immediate life and safety are at stake. U.S. Military EMP Standards supporting critical and time-urgent command, control, communications, computer, and intelligence (C4I) missions serve as the foundation for planning and protecting critical infrastructures and equipment in this category. Examples of missions where this apply are nuclear command and control and Presidential conferencing. However, this level of protection may also be appropriate for non-military related systems and missions, such as nuclear power plant controls, medical life support systems, and time-critical air traffic control functions.

This full EMP Resiliency Report as well as a very comprehensive Library on EMP Protection and Information can be found in the EMP Shield companies Free Library at: https://empshield.com/library. 

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