Aug 30, 2005
Open Systems International, Inc. (OSI) has completed the construction of a State-of-the-Art Secure Support Center. This facility will house all Customer Support Personnel and provide additional security to customer records and information. The Customer Support Department will begin to transition to the new area on September 1, 2005.
Utilizing guidelines based upon the NERC Standard CIP-002 through 009, OSI has implemented an environment that offers many layers of security and protection for our customer's operational Cyber systems. The first layer is Physical Security. The new Secure Support Center is an isolated Operations Center with restricted electronic key entry.
A second layer of security focuses on Personnel and Training. OSI performs Personal Risk Assessments of employees who have been categorized as Support Personnel. This provides additional reassurance that the OSI personnel accessing sensitive Cyber systems are trusted.
Furthermore, OSI has established an Electronic Security Perimeter (ESP) which prohibits unauthorized persons from obtaining access to the support network. To establish the ESP, the Support Network was separated from the OSI network with a firewall. All VPN and dial-in system connections are not viewable by unauthorized agents due to location and physical accessibility. The remote access systems were further secured by enforcing a strong password schema as well as restricting outbound connections such as web-surfing, chat rooms and e-mail.
"When OSI utilizes a VPN or remote connection, that computer becomes part of our customer's network. Our mission at OSI is to protect the security of our customer's network as vigorously as we would guard our own network. This new Center will allow us to more effectively address the ever changing security needs of our business and to better cope with the regulatory Cyber Security mandates such as the NERC Standard," said Paul Tsuchiya, Manager of the OSI Customer Support Department.
OSI (www.osii.com) provides open, state-of-the-art, and high-performance automation solutions to electric utilities worldwide. These solutions include Energy Management Systems (EMS), Distribution Management Systems (DMS), Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Systems, and Generation Management Systems (GMS), as well as individual software products and e-business solutions for electric utility operations. OSI is headquartered in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
For additional information regarding this news release please contact news@osii.com.
