EDF Renewables

Situation

EDF Group is present in more than twenty countries, and its subsidiary, EDF Renewables North America, develops and operates renewable solar and wind power generation sites. The company also provides operation and maintenance services as well as asset management and optimization.

As a generator, owner, and operator, EDF Renewables North America is subject to North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) regulations. NERC ensures the reliability of the nation’s Bulk Electric System, and the current version includes twelve Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) cybersecurity standards. These standards specify a minimum set of electronic access controls and processes that power generation and transmission companies must follow to ensure the reliability and security of the North American power grid.

“Because we own more than thirty sites and operate another dozen or so third-party-operated sites, we are subject to periodic audits, spot checks, and data requests from regulators,” said Todd Chwialkowski, Senior NERC Compliance Specialist at EDF Renewables North America. “That means that we need to develop an internal compliance program that keeps great documentation, not just good documentation.”

The problem was that the company didn’t have one reliable source for all of the necessary information when it came to its documentation.

“We had many tabular spreadsheets and Visio diagrams, along with basic network schematics,” said Todd. “Although we maintained compliance, using the tools we had made it a huge challenge to stay audit-ready and meet reporting responsibilities.”

To make regulatory compliance a much more manageable process, EDF Renewables North America turned to Network Perception.

Solution

After analyzing EDF Renewable North America’s situation, the team at Network Perception recommended that the company select the NP-View solution.

With an automated and human-centered design, NP-View provides a continuous network monitoring solution that works in the background and automatically alerts users when a relevant compliance or security event occurs.

Furthermore, NP-View solves those compliance and security audit challenges by performing an automated and comprehensive analysis of a network’s device configuration files. The software also analyzes firewall, router, and switch configurations to determine connectivity and identify any deviation from security policies, standards, and best practices. Users of NP-View can instantly visualize and understand issues with the network access policy.

“NP-View is exactly what we needed,” said Todd. “Internally, we can design network diagrams, track equipment inventory, and monitor configurations from switches, routers, and firewalls. We can also put IP and host lists together—something that’s not easy to do without NP-View.”

Additionally, Todd uses NP-View to analyze the layout of a network schema, check connections, check internal and external connectivity then capture that content and filter out just the information he needs. “All of this provides key documentation that’s becoming more and more important to the regulatory agencies,” said Todd.

Even though EDF Renewables North America has always maintained compliance, it’s more manageable for the company to demonstrate compliance by using NP-View. “In the right hands, NP-View is an efficient, easy to use, cost-effective solution,” said Todd.