HP unveils security-monitoring appliance for SCADA systems

HP Tuesday plans to unveil a network-monitoring appliance that captures event data generated in systems-control and data-acquisition networks to help energy-sector companies comply with federally required security standards that took effect this year.

The appliance, Trusted Compliance Solution for Energy (TCS-e), uses SenSage security-event management software to collect and analyze log data. According to HP and SenSage, TCS-e generates reports related to the auditing that's now required under the Critical Information Protection standards of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation. Those standards require energy-sector companies, including electric power companies and oil and gas suppliers, to demonstrate a wide range of security controls, including security-event monitoring.

The TCS-e appliance makes use of HP's Atalla hardware to apply cryptographic operations when recording information from SCADA networks to ensure confidentiality and non-repudiation of data. The HP encryption hardware has been certified under the federal government’s Federal Information Processing Standards' FIPS 140-2 product-testing program.

HP’s SCADA systems are widely used to control electric-power transmission.

Jim Pflaging, president and CEO of SenSage, says TCS-e works by time-stamping SCADA transactions and uses the Trusted Log and Analysis Manager to provide report generation.

The TCS-e starts at $75,000.