Upcoming SANS/NERC CTAG webinars on cloud and CIP compliance

I’ve previously mentioned the informal NERC group I’ve been participating in for around a year: the Cloud Technical Advisory Group (CTAG). The purpose of the group is to discuss and clarify the issues around use of the cloud by NERC entities, including (but certainly not limited to) issues related to NERC CIP compliance and the cloud. Note that this group is separate from the recently initiated NERC effort to draft new and/or revised standards (and perhaps changes to the  NERC Rules of Procedure, if required), which I wrote about in this post – although we will certainly be following that effort with great interest.

One of the members of the group is Tim Conway of SANS. SANS has offered to host a set of six webinars on aspects of the cloud. The first webinar will take place at 1PM Eastern Time on Wednesday July 24. The description and registration link are here. The presenters are Tim Conway (who will moderate each of the webinars) and the two leaders of the CTAG: Lew Folkerth of the RF Regional Entity and Chris Holmquest of the SERC RE. Signup pages for the other webinars will be made available later at the same link.

The titles and dates of all six webinars are (all webinars are currently planned for 1PM ET):

1.      Cloud and NERC CIP – Introduction and Current State (July 24)

2.      Cloud Services and CIP Standards – Regulated electric utility perspective (August 7)

3.      Cloud Services and CIP Standards – The application provider perspective (August 21)

4.      Cloud Services and CIP Standards – Cloud service providers (CSPs) (September 4)

5.      Cloud Services and CIP Standards – What are the current compliance challenges? (September 18)

6.      Cloud Services and CIP Standards – The path forward (October 2)

I will be participating in the fifth webinar, along with Tobias Whitney (formerly of NERC) and Tim Conway.

As I learn more details of these webinars, I’ll let you know, too! 

Are you a vendor of current or future cloud-based services or software that would like to figure out an appropriate strategy for selling to customers subject to NERC CIP compliance? Or are you a NERC entity that is struggling to understand what your current options are regarding cloud-based software and services? Please drop me an email so we can set up a time to discuss this!

Any opinions expressed in this blog post are strictly mine and are not necessarily shared by any of the clients of Tom Alrich LLC. If you would like to comment on what you have read here, I would love to hear from you. Please email me at tom@tomalrich.com.