The National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has invited eight companies to participate as technology collaborators in the Securing the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): Cybersecurity for Distributed Energy Resources Project (DERS).
The eight companies – Anterix, BlackRidge Technology, Cisco, Radiflow, Spherical Analytics, Sumo Logic, TDi Technologies, and Xage Security – “submitted capabilities that aligned with desired solution characteristics” that were listed in a Federal Register posting, NCCoE said.
The companies will collaborate to create a standards-based reference design for IIoT cybersecurity that will result in a publicly available National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Practice Guide.
“Use of DERs – such as wind and solar photovoltaics – is growing and transforming the traditional power grid,” NCCoE wrote in a post. “Proper management of these devices and their power flows is heavily dependent on digital communication and control across public communication networks.”
This NCCoE project will focus on helping energy companies secure IIoT devices and information exchanges of DERs. Specifically, the project will work address:
- Information exchanges and cybersecurity considerations involved in DER systems and distribution facilities/entities;
- Cybersecurity posture needed for trusted device identification and communication with other devices;
- Malware prevention, detection, and mitigation abilities in operating environments involving information exchanges;
- Protection mechanisms for system and data transmission components; and
- Cybersecurity analytics that is data driven and can help operators securely perform necessary tasks.
