If you are looking for an out-of-the-box, simple NERC CIP assessment tool, be sure to download the white paper at the bottom. It will provide you with an incredible amount of information on gaining more value from your cybersecurity assessment.
What is the NERC-CIP Framework?
In 1998, the US government launched a national program to protect essential industries called Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP). Each industry has their own CIP guidelines, and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) is a nonprofit, international regulatory authority that ensures reliability, risk reduction and security of the North American electric grid.
Why Use the NERC-CIP Framework?
The NERC-CIP framework has fourteen different standards to which North American power suppliers must adhere in order to be compliant. These range from Personnel & Training (CIP-004-6) to Incident Reporting and Response Planning (CIP 008-6) to Information Protection (CIP-011-2). The complete list can be found on the official NERC CIP Standards website, and compliance with these standards is mandatory for any company operating in the power supply industry.
As you might imagine, the compliance requirements are both exhaustive and overwhelming—but not being in compliance can result in sanctions from NERC. That is why many North American power suppliers turn to cybersecurity consultants to ensure that their operations adhere strictly to the controls.
Strategies for Conducting a NERC-CIP Assessment
While many consultants in the power industry may rely on paper or PDF assessments, savvy cybersecurity consultants realize that there must be a better way and look for NERC CIP assessment tools that can increase productivity and reduce paperwork. After all, the quicker these consultants can assess the degree to which a power supplier is in compliance with NERC CIP standards, the faster they can remediate problems and protect our power grid from bad actors.
Simplify NERC-CIP Assessments with SecurityGate.io
Cybersecurity consultants looking to increase their productivity, deliver more timely assessments and gain instant insights into areas needing improvement should consider using SecurityGate.io as their NERC CIP assessment tool. Rather than a static spreadsheet, SecurityGate.io is a cloud-based platform that is prepopulated with assessment workflows tailor-made specifically for the power supplier sector. If your consulting team is working in geographically dispersed facilities, SecurityGate.io is not only able to drive consistency among your team, but also to accept data in real-time to present insights in easy-to-consume dashboards upon assessment completion. Our NERC CIP assessment tool can bring the time to completion from a span of weeks down to a number of days.
And SecurityGate.io is more than just a NERC CIP assessment tool—our platform provides an easy way for consultants to view their clients’ progress so that they can deliver valuable post-assessment expertise. This can empower consultants to demonstrate their value to their clients by tracking the improvements made and the ROI for the business in hiring them versus being out of compliance.
Ready to Get Started?
If you are looking for an out-of-the-box, simple NERC CIP assessment tool, check out how SecurityGate.io can help your team streamline assessments in this 3-minute demo, or reach out to our team to get started.
Read and download this white paper to get the most value from your cybersecurity assessments.
