Cybersecurity Solutions for Energy, Utilities, and Power

As the energy, utilities, and power sectors face increasing attacks, Fortra pushes back with the cybersecurity solutions that can keep these resources online. 

Overview of Cybersecurity for the Energy, Utilities, and Power Sector

 

Ten years ago, cyberwarfare was a looming, theoretical, “on the horizon” type of threat. Now, we see its impact creep into daily headlines, from geopolitical tensions abroad to stories of foreign nation-state actors infiltrating our critical infrastructure. Essential sectors like energy and utilities cannot lean on the minimum level of defense to avoid the massive target now squarely upon their backs.

Threat actors motivated by financial gain, hacktivist causes, and state-sponsored espionage won’t pull punches when it comes to hitting societies where it hurts. That’s why Fortra’s arsenal of defense-ready solutions backs the power industry and other critical sectors like energy and utilities, keeping them online and hardening them against today’s modern attacks.

Recent events have proved that critical infrastructure cybersecurity measures must be strong and standardized to avoid leaving weak spots for attackers to exploit. One weak link in the chain, whether it be in a water utility or major national oil pipeline, can and will be found. 

Benefits of Cybersecurity in Energy & Utilities Organizations

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Practice against today's cyberwarfare techniques

Expose your utilities plant to the kind of advanced threats it will face in real-world attacks, from APTs to polymorphic malware and more.

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Secure against AI-driven threats

Catch behavioral anomalies in your network and in your inbox with the latest in behavioral-driven detection technology. Its utilities cybersecurity that stays ahead of the industry curve.

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Maintain compliance in a highly regulated landscape

Don’t leave energy and utilities plants exposed to failed audits, revoked licensure, contract disqualification, or ransomware actors holding a compliance call-out over your head. 

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Protect the public interest

Hold the line against nation-state attackers and maintain societal stability by making sure essential services don’t go offline.

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Scale to the modern era

Secure anything from legacy architecture to hybrid and cloud-native environments with energy and utilities cybersecurity solutions designed to bridge the gap. 

Regulatory Frameworks and Compliance Requirements for Energy & Utilities

An old industry adage states that compliance doesn’t equal security. In some cases, that’s true. However, those standards have gotten a lot better as major energy and utilities stakeholders have come together in recent years to address the criticality of cyber defense given the common threats of cyber espionage, nation-state attacks, and advanced technological threats. To this day, utilities cybersecurity standards continue to improve, and we can anticipate waves of additional regulation in coming years.

Compliance Frameworks

To avoid crippling attacks to the power industry or energy and utilities sectors, regulatory frameworks and guidelines were put in place. The following list is not comprehensive, only highlighting several cybersecurity standards required within the U.S. energy, utilities, and power sectors.

NERC CIP, or the North American Reliability Corporation (NERC) Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) reliability standards, govern(s) the cybersecurity requirements of organizations operating within the U.S. bulk electric system (BES). Some items it covers include:

  • Configuration and change management
  • Supply chain risk management
  • Personnel and training

Navigating NERC CIP complexities can be tough, but Fortra can help. Once NERC creates the CIP standards, FERC (the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) approves them.

The Cybersecurity Baselines for Electrical Distribution Systems (EDS) and Distributed Energy Resources (DER) are a set of guidelines designed to encourage cybersecurity alignment among grid operators and energy utilities in different states. The baselines outline the minimum set of cybersecurity controls that should be adopted among these entities, and consist of standards in over two dozen areas, including:

  • Securing sensitive data
  • Email security
  • System backups
  • Documenting device configuration
  • Limiting OT connections to the public internet

The Cybersecurity Baselines are designed to be used as a resource among public utility commissions, utilities, and DER operators and aggregators.

In 2021, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) rolled out the Security Regulation Pipeline directive to replace previous voluntary cybersecurity measures for the oil and gas industry, part of the broader power industry of the United States. The directive requires covered entities to report a range of cybersecurity incidents to CISA within 12 hours of identifying the incident. These incidents include:

  • Unauthorized access to OT systems
  • Malicious software on an IT or OT system
  • A DOS (Denial of Service) attack on an IT or OT system
  • A physical attack on network infrastructure
  • “Any other cybersecurity incident that results in operational disruption” or has the potential to cause such, to the “safe and efficient transportation of liquids and gasses”

The TSA continues to update its cybersecurity requirements for oil and gas utilities today.

Often developed, co-developed, or influenced by NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology) — one of the most trusted and influential standards organizations in the world — these updated power, energy, and utilities cybersecurity mandates address some of today’s most sophisticated threats.

Best Practices

Best practices for ensuring compliance with energy and utilities security standards include:

Vulnerability management to determine areas of non-compliance

A dedicated GRC (governance, risk, and compliance) team to audit current processes for compliance and ensure future processes align

An integrity and change management solution to prevent configuration drift away from compliant policies

Offensive security testing (penetration testing and red teaming) to ensure that compliance really does mean security in your environment

Regular compliance audits performed by an in-house team or managed security services provider (MSSP)

Fortra Solutions for Energy & Utilities Organizations

Vulnerability Management

Find and fix exploitable vulnerabilities within IT and OT infrastructure.

Integrity & Compliance Monitoring

Ensure that security controls remain compliant and properly configured over time, despite updates and changes to energy, utilities, and power systems or applications.

Email Security

Protect your utility from falling victim to sophisticated social engineering scams seeking to gain access to critical services.

Data Protection

Protect intellectual property, systems data, plant blueprints and more from falling into the wrong hands.

Offensive Security

Don’t stop at NERC CIP. Make sure compliance means security by putting your utility through the ultimate real-world test.

Managed XDR

Short staffed? Combine in-house expertise with the best in managed detection and response for the kind of 24/7/365 monitoring critical infrastructure requires.

Compliance

Never fear another NERC CIP audit again. Find automated solutions to replace old manual methods and ease compliance with custom, industry-standard solutions.

Security Awareness Training

Make sure every employee knows how to handle sensitive data in a digital environment, because no utility is immune to compliance blunders and attackers always look for the weakest link.

Fortra's Cybersecurity Solutions

Fortra's Energy & Utilities Cybersecurity Case Studies

Fortra is on the front lines of securing energy and utilities in cyberspace. Here are a few examples of our commitment. 

Western Farmers Electric Cooperative (WFEC) powers homes across rural Oklahoma and New Mexico. Overwhelmed by manual processes, they needed a cybersecurity solution that could help them meet NERC CIP compliance requirements with only the staff they had on hand. They also needed a way to baseline their systems at scale and turn raw power industry data into actionable insights.

Read more

This Fortune 250 energy company faced the pressure of an impending NERC CIP audit, which would scrutinize their over 1,000 NERC CIP resources, 2,000 pieces of intellectual property, and thousands of industrial assets. Following one particularly difficult audit experience, the utility needed an automated, industry-standard solution that would ease compliance efforts in the future — and integrate with existing, non-negotiable hardware and software requirements.

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One of the biggest natural gas producers in North America needed a way to send business critical information without risking the loss of data to unintended parties. To stay competitive, details about its high volumes of collected data and innovative, proprietary technology solutions needed to be kept safe. When their current approach of deploying multiple servers proved vulnerable to compromise, they needed a utilities cybersecurity solution that could sit on top of their invested architecture and plug those security gaps.

Read more

Resources

Secure Energy & Utilities with Fortra

Want to go a step further in safeguarding critical industrial assets? Explore our range of energy and utilities cybersecurity solutions when you talk with a Fortra expert today. 

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