As federal sites invest in distributed energy resources (DERs) like solar panels and battery backups, investments in cybersecurity must also be considered. More energy resources create more complexity to manage — introducing the potential of new cyber vulnerabilities and added costs down the road.
Luckily, there is a new tool available to help manage this risk: the National Renewable Energy Laboratory’s (NREL’s) DER Risk Manager (DER-RM), a downloadable application that implements and automates a widely trusted framework for information security from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The DER-RM, developed with support from the U.S. Department of Energy Federal Energy Management Program (FEMP), offers a user-friendly solution for sites that must comply with NIST’s Risk Management Framework.
“After two years of the team’s hard work and extensive research on the NIST 800-37 Risk Management Framework, we’re very excited to launch the beta version of this tool,” said Tami Reynolds, NREL cybersecurity project lead. “The seven-step NIST framework is a comprehensive process that helps organizations manage information security and privacy risk,…
