With the announcement of the largest single energy grid modernization investment in US history, the $3.4 billion grant by Federal Government for Smart Grid Development, is intended to revitalize the energy sector by reducing energy consumption, revamping energy T&D, automate efficient energy usage, galvanize new sources of energy and improve electricity reliability.

The Smart Grid infrastructure will digitize electricity metering and create an integrated network of electric meters. These meters will act as the end-points of a DCS and SCADA network. Ensuring the reliability of the network as well as the integrity of the data transmitted through the network will be critical to the smooth operations of the Smart Grid.

The SCADA infrastructure of the Smart Grid network will be both physically and logically interconnected with the business network as every smart meter is a potential gateway to the organizational network. This interconnectivity is vital in order to ensure the efficient operations of the Smart Grid and its ability to automate metering.

This interconnectedness brings with it the ills that have beset the IT world in terms of greater susceptibility to cyber attacks and cyber terror.

Cyber attacks can be perpetrated both by outsiders as well as insiders and may be caused by design faults, employee errors, firewall misconfigurations, tardy software updates and circumvention of existing security elements such as IDS and IPS systems. Such attacks can have far –reaching and detrimental effects on the grid data acquisition and control systems and could lead to enormous damage as well as power outage.

To effectively meet NERC-CIP compliance and to ensure uninterrupted services, companies must address their overall security posture. Waterfall Security Solutions provides a cutting-edge solution based on unique unidirectional technology. This solution enables secure and impenetrable information replication from critical networks, including SCADA networks,
to less-secure connected networks.

Waterfall Security Solutions Ltd. is the leading provider of Unidirectional Security Gateways for Process Control Systems, SCADA systems, Remote Monitoring and Segregated Networks. Waterfall’s products have been deployed in many homeland security agencies, critical national infrastructures and mission critical organizations in the USA, Canada, and Europe, as the central component of a strong regulatory compliance plan. Waterfall’s offerings include security solutions for leading industrial applications (such as the OSIsoft PI® Historian, Instep EDNA, GE Proficy Historian, the Siemens WinTS and the GE OSM remote monitoring platforms) and leading industrial protocols (such as OPC, Modbus, DNP3 and ICCP).

Many of Waterfall Unidirectional Security Gateways™ installations are designed and aimed to assist in achieving compliance to NERC CIP, NRC and other regulations and requirements.