INDUSTRY

Sandia National Laboratories has restarted its operations involving Classified Removable Electronic Media (CREM). Department of Energy Deputy Secretary Kyle McSlarrow approved Sandia’s plan to restart CREM operations Aug. 31. The approval for restart follows a six-week cessation of CREM operations that began July 23 when Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham ordered a DOE-wide stand-down, process review, and inventory for all activities involving the use of CREM. Since then Sandia has strengthened its CREM-related security and accounting processes, conducted awareness training of all employees, and required employees who handle CREM to take additional specialized training in the proper use and control of CREM. The lab also has conducted a wall-to-wall inventory of accountable CREM (ACREM), during which employees were instructed to find and document some 14,000 items in Sandia’s ACREM inventory and cross check each ACREM item with lists of CREM holdings. CREM can include removable hard drives, computer memory disks, laptop computers, and other electronic media. One-hundred percent of Sandia’s accountable CREM is accounted for, says Sandia Vice President for Security Ron Detry. The inventory and process improvements were both verified internally within Sandia and externally validated by a National Nuclear Security Administration team. “We recognize that all of us who hold national security responsibilities must clearly demonstrate we are effective at controlling classified information, so this stand-down was something we took very seriously,” Detry says. “We took this time to check and double check our holdings and further improve our security and accounting procedures for CREM,” he says. “It was difficult and painstaking for many employees, but in the end the lab will be better off for it. I greatly appreciate the dedication and hard work put in by all the staff and management involved in this effort.” Among the process improvements is the addition of weekly inventories of CREM holdings, Detry says.