HP Unveils Security Solution

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- HP (NYSE:HPQ - News) today introduced an integrated security appliance for energy customers that provides an additional line of defense against cyber-security threats and helps automate compliance tasks.

The HP Trusted Compliance Solution for Energy (TCS-e) helps power and energy companies mitigate security risk by providing robust protection against threats from computer hackers. The automation technology in HP TCS-e also helps energy companies reduce the business risks and costs associated with noncompliance, such as regulatory audits, sanctions and hefty fines.

The solution combines HP compliance automation software and storage technology with event data management security analysis software from SenSage, Inc. It also includes the HP Atalla (FIPS) 140-2 Level 4-certified hardware-based security subsystem, which provides cryptographic operations -- privacy, integrity, authentication and non-repudiation -- and hosts the security-sensitive portions of the TCS-e applications.

HP TCS-e was designed specifically to meet the cyber-security, compliance and audit requirements of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Information Protection (NERC-CIP) 002-009 reliability standards mandate.(1) Approved nearly a year ago, the mandate calls for energy operators to implement and demonstrate appropriate controls, which require compliance documentation, security event monitoring, incident alerting, forensic analysis and event data retention.

To help energy customers meet these compliance requirements, HP TCS-e automates the NERC-CIP compliance management processes and transforms an energy operator's intent to comply with new regulatory standards into actual plans, controls, records and processes."According to our research, HP platforms run the systems that control 65 percent of the world's electric power transmission," said Chuck Newton, president of Maryland-based Newton-Evans Research. "With these new security appliance products, HP is addressing many of the required NERC-CIP cyber-security and compliance tasks by transforming a company's compliance processes from manual to automated and sustained. The TCS-e security solution undoubtedly will raise the bar for cyber-security, reliability and compliance solutions in our industry."

Hewlett-Packard Co.