Utilities and Critical Infrastructure: NERC CIP Compliance
RedSeal helps utilities protect networks that are critical to our daily lives, networks where reliability is paramount. These critical networks are an attractive target for those who want to disrupt society and create fear.
We work with our utilities customers to secure two different types of networks—corporate networks and those that control critical equipment, Supervisor Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) networks.
To minimize potential attack surfaces, you need to separate or segment these two types of networks and set up an electronic security perimeter. In North America, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) Reliability Standards codify these requirements and include financial penalties for non-compliance with the NERC CIP standards.
While no one vendor can help you with all the NERC CIP compliance requirements, RedSeal provides strong NERC CIP support in the areas of network architecture, testing, device inventory and simulation.
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The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Reliability Standards define a comprehensive set of requirements that are the basis for maintaining the reliability of the North American Bulk Electric System (BES) and protecting it from cyber-attacks.
However, NERC Registered Entities struggle to define security best practices and controls that will easily meet the standards. NERC Sanction Guidelines include penalties of up to $1 million per day per violation, which is the highest financial penalty of any regulatory framework in North America. Also, the NERC CIP Standards continue to evolve, as do the interpretations as to what constitutes acceptable control activities under the standard.
As NERC CIP Version 6 compliance has become mandatory, utilities need to invest in systems that allow them to meet the standard with the lowest operational overhead. While all NERC CIP Version 6 requirements cannot be addressed by any single vendor, RedSeal provides strong NERC CIP support in the areas of network architecture, testing, device inventory, simulation, and cybersecurity analytics.
RedSeal delivers simplified NERC CIP Version 6 compliance with:
- Continuous validation of the Electronic Security Perimeter (ESP) for mixed vendor environments
- Malicious code mitigation via least privilege network access
- Vulnerability remediation prioritization based on actual risk
- Change simulation
The RedSeal cybersecurity analytics platform’s unique ability to analyze large scale, multi-vendor networks and evaluate them against a target security architecture makes reaching that goal much easier. By replacing labor-intensive manual analysis with automation, organizations can become NERC CIP Version 6 compliant on a continuous basis, simultaneously improving security and lowering costs.
