NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence (NCCoE) has released a draft of NIST Special Publication (SP) 1800-32, Securing the Industrial Internet of Things: Cybersecurity for Distributed Energy Resources.

The use of small-scale distributed energy resources (DERs) is growing rapidly and transforming the power grid. In fact, a distribution utility may need to remotely communicate with thousands of DERs and other grid-edge devices—many of which are not owned by them.  Any attack that can deny, disrupt, or tamper with DER communications could prevent a utility from performing necessary control actions and could diminish grid resiliency.

In this draft cybersecurity practice guide, the NCCoE applies standards, best practices, and commercially available technology to protect the digital communication, data, and control of cyber-physical grid-edge devices. The guide demonstrates an example solution for monitoring and detecting unusual behavior of connected industrial internet of things (IIoT) devices and building a comprehensive audit trail of trusted IIoT data flows.

The public comment period is open through October 20, 2021. See the publication details for a copy of the document and instructions for submitting comments.

NOTE: A call for patent claims is included on page iv of this draft (Volume B). For additional information, see the Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) Patent Policy--Inclusion of Patents in ITL Publications.