NIST’s process control forum helps networks prevent cyber attacks

A 500-member forum of industry, government, and academic technical experts, led by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), has released a new draft set of cyber security requirements for industrial control systems. The requirements in this 149-page document, “System Protection Profile for Industrial Control Systems (SPP-ICS),” were developed by the Process Control Security Requirements Forum (PCSRF). Implementing the requirements can help protect the nation’s critical industrial infrastructures from cyber attacks.

The forum’s draft report addresses security requirements needed throughout an industrial control system’s lifecycle, including design, implementation, configuration, maintenance, and decommissioning. The report deals with industrial control systems such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, distributed control systems (DCS), and programmable logic controllers (PLCs). Requirements for components of the control system, such as industrial controller authentication and sensor authentication, also are outlined. PCSRF’s SPP-ICS report is available free of charge at https://www.isd.mel.nist.gov/projects/processcontrol/SPP-ICSv1.0.doc .

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