Simplify Log Management for NERC CIP Compliance

The NERC CIP (North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection) is a set of compliance standards that ensures a reliable supply of power in the United States, Canada, and some parts of Mexico. NERC CIP emphasizes the use of firewalls and other SIEM tools for securing cyber assets.

Traditional NERC CIP software often has a complex setup and tedious workflows that increase human effort. This also increases the time to respond against threats or performance bottlenecks.  SolarWinds SEM is designed to help you meet FERC/NERC CIP cybersecurity standards with Active Responses. These automated responses offer run-time protection and can trigger when SolarWinds SEM detects any unusual pattern. For instance, SolarWinds SEM can disable network access on a user’s workstation after excessive attempts to access a secure network, or it can immediately eject USB devices when inserted into restricted PCs. SEM can also reset user account passwords and restart or shut down machines.

Advanced persistent threats (APTs) can remain undetected for several months and cause severe reputational and financial losses to large organizations. Similarly, many threat actors exploit zero-day vulnerabilities to craft sophisticated attacks. However, all such attacks eventually need access to local files and data. That’s where SolarWinds Security Event Manager comes in.

SEM is designed to correlate logs from AVs, firewall, and IDS/IPS with file audit events to find APTs and malware in your environment. It allows you to detect suspicious activity leading to abrupt changes in file attributes or metadata. With actionable intelligence at hand, you can take prioritized actions to mitigate such advanced attacks.

Third-party security teams use honeypots and event log analysis tools to monitor bad IPs and hosts, and then they share this threat intelligence to help organizations avert cyberattacks. With this feed, you can help reduce your exposure to common security threats by blocking traffic from malicious sources.  SolarWinds Security Event Manager uses a continuously updated threat intelligence feed and is designed to correlate this information with its logs and events to improve detection of ever-evolving malware, DDoS, and botnet attacks. This can help you meet NERC CIP requirements for securing critical control systems, networking equipment, and mission-critical applications. 

Other SolarWinds Tools to Help Demonstrate NERC CIP Compliance:

• SolarWinds Access Rights Manager
• SolarWinds Patch Manager

Related Features:

• Compliance Management
• Compliance Reporting
• Compliance Risk Management
• SOX Compliance Software
• PCI DSS Compliance Software
• DISA STIG Compliance