GRC Software for the Oil & Gas Industry | ZenGRC
ZenGRC offers automated Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) software tailored for the oil and gas industry to address increasing cybersecurity threats and regulatory burdens—such as the 2021 Security Directive and frameworks like NIST, HIPAA, GDPR, and ISO—by enabling critical infrastructure operators to efficiently plan, implement, monitor compliance, manage risks, and protect sensitive operational and personal data beyond error-prone manual methods.
Deter Cybersecurity Threats and Ensure Data Privacy
The Regulatory Burden
The oil and gas industry uses a range of complex systems and interconnected technologies to extract, transport, and refine oil and gas products. While these technologies support the delivery of energy services and products, they are increasingly vulnerable to cyberattacks, making cybersecurity critical.
Recent high-profile attacks, including the ransomware attacks on the Colonial Pipeline, have prompted the White House to take steps to safeguard U.S. critical infrastructure.
Oil and gas infrastructure security and risk management are too critical to manage via spreadsheets and legacy tools. Manual workflows are often rife with inaccuracies, which could cost an oil and gas operation dearly. Organizations need a robust, automated solution to plan, implement, and monitor compliance and risk.
A Framework for Information Security Success
A 2021 Security Directive requires critical pipeline owners and operators to report confirmed and potential cybersecurity incidents and designate a Cybersecurity Coordinator. It also requires them to review their current practices, identify any gaps and related remediation measures to address cyber-related risks, and report the results within 30 days.
Any security risks for corporate financial or operational data must be protected with the appropriate governance measures. Furthermore, oil and gas companies have regulatory obligations around personal data.
Regulatory frameworks impacting this industry include:
- The NIST Cybersecurity Framework for Critical Infrastructure
- HIPAA for data privacy regulations if you house personal healthcare information (PHI)
- GDPR to provide privacy notices and rights to users in the EU
- ISO for effective risk management strategies
Organizations in the oil and gas industry must be prepared with a robust compliance and risk management program to meet cybersecurity and regulatory compliance requirements.
Manage Compliance and Risk with Confidence and Ease
ZenGRC is a risk and compliance management solution that offers a cost-effective, integrated way to meet risk and compliance objectives across numerous, complicated risk management and security standards.
With compliance and security frameworks built-in and maintained by experts, along with suggested risk and threat scores and real-time connections between control assessments and risk scoring, you get a unified, real-time view of risk and compliance and significant efficiency gains. This allows you to stay ahead of threats, reduce risk, and strengthen compliance.
ZenGRC empowers you to automate and accomplish your goals faster and with greater accuracy so you can focus on mission-critical tasks like pipeline management.
Compliance Objectives
Both the pipeline industry guidelines and the NIST critical infrastructure guidance include steps such as risk assessment, response planning, mitigation, training, and protective technology to keep essential assets as far away from threats as possible.
For security officers building a compliance strategy, those obligations can translate into seemingly insurmountable objectives. ZenGRC can help streamline and guide risk, cybersecurity, and compliance efforts.
In addition to providing a central repository for organizing and cataloging all compliance documentation, ZenGRC’s expert-provided framework and standards content, initial threat and risk scores, and automated workflows can help you to:
- Take an inventory of all the systems that control data assets, facilitate the pipeline, and connect to the rest of your IT infrastructure
- Assess your baseline security posture—both your internal systems and any third-party vendors that make up the supply chain
- Cross-check your baseline controls with any pertinent frameworks (NIST, ISO, SOC 2, etc.) and identify the security gaps that need to be filled to meet regulatory requirements
- Establish mitigation steps that might be necessary and assign them to control owners
- Conduct new risk assessments routinely to ensure compliance over time and keep up with new regulations and emerging threats
Enhance Your Compliance Strategy Today.
FAQs for Oil & Gas Industry
Who regulates the oil and gas industry?
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) is the main regulatory body for the oil and gas industry. However, several other federal agencies provide oversight for various components of the industry, including:
- The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
- The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC)
- The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA)
- The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)
- The U.S. Department of Energy
What are the benefits of risk and compliance software in the oil and gas industry?
Benefits include:
- Gain a unified, real-time view of risk and compliance, framed around your business priorities, to help you clearly communicate the impact of risk to stakeholders
- Reduce audit fatigue by reusing controls and evidence across frameworks
- Continuously test for effectiveness to ensure your organization is always audit-ready
- Audit traceability and task notifications, creating a comprehensive audit trail to reference when improving business processes
- Get real-time risk scores and automatically surface changes in risk to stay ahead of cybersecurity threats
- Ease of task management and organization, with clear priorities and objectives
What is the role of compliance and risk in the oil and gas industry?
Due to the critical nature of oil and gas to the global economy, the industry is heavily regulated. From emissions concerns to process safety management to standard corporate oversight, environmental compliance requirements are deeply rooted in this industry.
Many frameworks have unique requirements for oil and gas companies, often requiring significant upfront costs and investment to manage and implement.
Accordingly, oil and gas organizations must rely on technology solutions, like GRC software, to understand and navigate the numerous challenges and enterprise-wide risks they’re facing.
What exploits and security breaches threaten the oil and gas industry?
Digital transformation in the oil and gas industry has increased the frequency and severity of cyberattacks. As the energy industry works to create cleaner, more dependable, and affordable energy, this involves new technologies, business opportunities, and changing rules and policies.
Chief information security officers (CISOs) must navigate these complexities while protecting their organizations from ongoing and incoming cyber threats. A unified risk, cybersecurity, and compliance solution can help CISOs and InfoSec leaders better see, understand, and act on risk while communicating the financial impact of risk and compliance to key stakeholders.