What is NERC CIP-010?
NERC CIP-010 is the North American electric reliability standard covering configuration change management and vulnerability assessments for cyber systems that operate the bulk electric system. It requires responsible entities to develop baseline configurations for in-scope systems, authorize and document changes against those baselines, monitor for unauthorized changes where required, and perform periodic vulnerability assessments. The core discipline is knowing exactly how each system is configured and proving every change was controlled.
The longer answer.
CIP-010 makes the baseline configuration a first-class compliance artifact: what is installed, what is enabled, and how the system is configured must be documented, and deviations from that record are the trigger for investigation. This is configuration drift management written into a mandatory, enforceable reliability standard.
Utilities and grid operators typically run these environments on-premises or fully isolated. CISGuard fits this model with on-premises and air-gapped deployment, continuous scanning against CIS Benchmarks as hardened baselines, drift detection when a monitored configuration deviates, and timestamped audit-ready reports for compliance evidence.
More questions on Frameworks?
Our compliance engineers can show you exactly how CISGuard handles Frameworks in a briefing scoped to your environment.