Program Assists Utilities with New NERC CIP Requirements

PowerSecure International, Inc. has announced that its Encari division has developed and launched comprehensive indices of topics related to the version five North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Cyber Security Standards in order to assist utilities in understanding and complying with these important and complex new cyber security requirements.

The recently issued fifth version of the CIP Reliability Standards from the Federal Regulatory Energy Commission (FERC) and NERC address the cyber security of the bulk electric system, adopt new cyber security controls and extend the scope of the systems that are to be protected by the CIP Reliability Standards. The new standards significantly increase the compliance requirements for utilities, electric cooperatives and municipal power providers.

PowerSecure's Encari helps large investor-owned generation and transmission utilities, municipalities and cooperative utilities assess, enhance and maintain their compliance with NERC’s CIP Cyber Security Standards. Utilities must comply with these standards or they could be subject to significant fines and penalties.

One of the indices is geared specifically toward assisting senior managers, per the CIP-002-5 R3 compliance requirement, navigate the version five standards while the other index may be used by all others fulfilling various NERC CIP compliance management roles.