SigmaFlow Announces Enhancements to its Compliance Manager Solution to Support NERC CIP v5 Standards
Plano, TX (PRWEB) February 10, 2015 -- SigmaFlow, the industry leader in NERC compliance solutions, today announced added enhancements to its Compliance Manager Solution to support NERC CIP version 5 standards. The new CIP v5 model provides additional preconfigured functionality that automates and streamlines the collection of evidence, document management and data-driven reporting – required to adhere to NERC CIP v5 standards.
The NERC CIP v5 standards provide many new and redefined compliance expectations for electric utilities. The challenge of transitioning from version 3 to version 5 can be complicated and often costly for utilities that are not adequately prepared. There are also many utilities coming under CIP for the first time due to the new brightline impact criteria in v5, requiring them to build an entire CIP program to prove their adherence to the standards, with processes in place to ensure their audit readiness.
“NERC CIP v5 is a big challenge for utilities, both those transitioning from v3 and those new to the standards. Our CIP v5 enhancements provide a streamlined option for compliance – one they can fully deploy in a matter of weeks,” said Terry Schurter, vice president of NERC Solutions at SigmaFlow. “We have received significant industry validation from prospects and customers regarding our comprehensive functionality, ease of deployment and customer support. Our automated process driven approach ensures audit readiness along with substantial cost and time savings,” Schurter added.
SigmaFlow Compliance Manager
SigmaFlow Compliance Manager manages all documents, data, and work activities while automatically collecting and building the evidence for NERC compliance in a real-time repository. The solution automatically collects and manages compliance evidence through data management, document management, tasks and procedures for all of the NERC CIP Standards.
The SigmaFlow Closed-Loop Controls FrameworkTM provides an out-of-the-box, preconfigured solution to support real-time compliance, ensuring reliability with built-in validation and feedback loops that detect compliance gaps and issues as they happen. The Framework includes controls for:
• Audit and RSAW Readiness / Production
• Security Controls, Access Rights, Change Management, Ports and Services, and Patches
• Cyber Security Training and PRAs (Personnel Risk Assessments)
• Information Protection, Compliance Events, Document Reviews, and Compliance Assurance
“The NERC CIP Standards have matured to version 5 and many requirements have expanded applicability and increased timelines, driving the importance of a process driven compliance management framework,” said Karl Perman, director of member services for EnergySec. “The use of automated solutions to replace manual processes can help considerably with time savings and greatly decrease the potential for errors when producing evidence for compliance.”
Solution enhancements and functionality to support NERC CIP v5:
• Classification Management (Sites, Systems, Cyber Assets) | SigmaFlow CIP v5 enhancements include all new assessment and classification processes to address the new assessment and classification criteria in CIP v5.
• Configuration Management (Cyber Asset Change & Baseline Management) | Configuration Management has been enhanced in this release to support v5 requirements for changes on existing cyber assets.
• Identity Access Management | The SigmaFlow solution now automatically calculates and displays the time allotment for each physical or logical access right change ticket, collects the data required to show each ticket was completed on time, and produces the evidence for each access change ticket in the solution.
• ESP High Water Mark | With Compliance Manager, the ESP High Water Mark rule is automatically enforced, ensuring that all BES Cyber Systems and Cyber Assets are classified properly.
• Automated Evidence Generation | The new SigmaFlow Evidence Generation control creates composite reports using data from multiple sources with the click of a button.
• Cyber Asset / BES Cyber System Mapper | Further automating compliance, the SigmaFlow mapper automatically determines and tracks what requirements apply to each BES Cyber System and Cyber Asset, and automatically maintains the list of all BES Cyber Systems and Cyber Assets that apply to each requirement.
For a more detailed breakdown of the SigmaFlow CIP v5 solution enhancements, read the full release on the SigmaFlow website at http://sigmaflow.com/sigmaflow-enhancements-cip-v5.
For more information about the SigmaFlow Compliance Manager Solution or for a demo of the solution please visit http://www.sigmaflow.com. Pricing options make the Compliance Manager affordable for small utilities a scaling to meeting the largest utilities.
About SigmaFlow
SigmaFlow is a leading provider of process execution solutions for electric and renewables utilities and the upstream oil & gas industry. The company’s solution portfolio includes Compliance Manager for CIP & 693 and Upstream Well Delivery Solution. For more information, visit http://www.sigmaflow.com.
Leah Morse, SigmaFlow, http://www.sigmaflow.com, +1 972.826.4370, [email protected]
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