On July 6, the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC or the Commission) the first batch of Notices of Penalty describing violations of Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) Reliability Standards By users, owners, and operators of the bulk-power system. Most of these notices involved inappropriate access to Critical Cyber Assets, and all of the violations were settled for small amounts. Notably, these Notices of Penalty also utilized an abbreviated, confidential format that removed the name of the registered entity and most of the detail regarding the violations at issue. Read more…