NCCoE partners with eight companies to secure IIoTs

The US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and its National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) chose eight companies as technology collaborators in Securing the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT): Cybersecurity for Distributed Energy Resources (DER) Project. The companies were chosen following a call made by NIST last October asking for organisations to provide products and experience relating to securing IIoTs in the energy sector. The project will focus on helping energy companies secure IIoT information exchanges of DERs in their operating environments. It will address: (a) information exchanges between and among DER systems and distribution facilities and the cybersecurity considerations involved in these interactions, (b) processes and technologies needed for trusted device identification and communication with other devices, (c) ability to provide malware prevention, detection, and mitigation in operating environments, (d) mechanisms that can be used for protecting the system, (e) data transmission and data-driven cybersecurity analytics to help owners and operators securely perform necessary tasks. The collaboration will result in a public NIST Cybersecurity Practice Guide, which will document the design for securing IIoT in commercial and/or utility-scale DER environments.