Helpful Clarifications Still Leave NERC CIP Version 4 Changes Feeling Overwhelming

If your job is to ensure your utility complies with new version 4, certainly you've been scouring info like this for a while now. But if you're a member of electric sector support or regulatory communities, including services providers and state commissioners, it'll behoove you to get a better feel for the massively numerous and often ambiguous compliance hoops through which these folks have to jump.


Thanks for my friend and super sharp energy sector security colleague Tim Deloach for prompting me on this. And if you're going to click through and read it at all, I want you to read this Q&A first for the motivation/urgency/anxiety/terror it produces:

Q: I thought there was an 18-month implementation plan under v4 for newly identified assets?

A: You have a lot of company; many others thought the same thing – but it’s wrong.... Briefly, you have a 12-24 month implementation period under V4 for assets that are newly commissioned. or newly identified after 4/1/2014. But for assets that were in operation as of June 25 of 2012 (the day that FERC Order 761 was published in the Federal
Registry), full compliance with CIP-002-4 through CIP-009-4 is due on 4/1/2014.

Nice job EnergySec and Honeywell, particularly CIP guru Tom Alrich, for the webcast and now for following up with this Q&A infosheet.