True North Solutions Project Profile: Cybersecurity and SCADA Upgrade

Client Overview

The client is one of the largest North American utility operators engaged in natural gas and electric transmission & distribution. The company provides LDC natural gas and electric service to millions of people throughout a 70,000-square-mile service area. 

With the size and complexity of its operational systems and its highly recognizable public profile, the client is continuously dealing with cyber threats and physical attacks to its operations and assets. 

Client Requirements

The client is engaged in a supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) host control center conversion of its entire electrical operational system and has incorporated True North Solutions to assist in testing its operations’ process communication media from end device back to its SCADA control center as well as quality of converted assets.

Prior to kicking off the project, validation of True North Solutions’ operational technology (OT) cybersecurity policies, incident awareness, incident response protocols and full compliance against its North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) critical infrastructure protection (CIP) cybersecurity reliability standards and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) cybersecurity requirements were required. The client set up an independent third-party audit of our systems. True North Solutions underwent rigorous third-party assessments involving physical inspections of our facilities and audit testing of our physical system, documents, personnel, and policies to ensure compliance with the NERC-CIP cybersecurity reliability standards and NIST smart grid guidelines and standards.

True North Solutions has successfully complied with the client’s OT cybersecurity requirements (per NERC-CIP and NIST) and is certified to work on the client’s highly secure OT platforms. True North Solutions is currently engaged in key roles on the project in this manner. Due to its critical nature, scale, legacy equipment dependencies, and advanced application integration needs, True North Solutions is intimately engaged in the quality assurance aspects of the project as pertains to the conversion, thus ultimately minimizing its risk. 

Details

At the forefront of this project, True North invested heavily in our OT cybersecurity controls framework, tools, and processes to ensure the security of our data and that of our client’s data. This particular client’s rigorous cybersecurity requirements were the catalyst for True North Solutions to invest heavily to further implement standards, processes, procedures, and equipment that meet the stringent requirements of North America’s largest utilities, energy systems, and industrial operators.

We are proud of our demonstrated leadership in this area, and we are confident that our compliance will contribute to the security of all our client’s project data.

Learn more about True North’s cybersecurity capabilities >>