電力

The North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) is a set of standards developed by NERC, aimed to heighten the protection level of Bulk Electric System (BES) cyber assets and to prevent potential instability and operational interruption. NERC CIP covers the United States, several provinces in Canada, and one state in Mexico. Failure to comply can lead to penalties up to $1 milliion USD per day depending on the violation severity. It also serves as reference for some regions that it does not directly apply to.

Programmable logic controllers (PLCs) are the most important components of industrial control systems, providing the high performance and efficiency that is necessary for automation. They receive information from input devices (e.g. sensors), process the data, and conduct necessary actions based on pre-programmed parameters. These days, PLCs are also more integrated and interconnected with other complex systems and open source solutions.

Electricity serves an important part to the economy and to people’s day-to-day activities. A power grid that fails can cause catastrophic damages.