We help energy and utility providers migrate critical workloads to hybrid cloud — meeting NERC CIP compliance requirements while modernising SCADA systems and enabling grid analytics.
Energy and utility infrastructure is among the most critical — and most constrained — in any economy. Power grids, water treatment plants, and gas distribution networks operate under regulatory frameworks designed when "the cloud" did not exist. NERC CIP mandates air-gapped security zones. SCADA systems running 20-year-old protocols cannot simply be lifted and shifted. Yet the demand for modern analytics, remote monitoring, and operational efficiency has never been greater.
CloudForge designs hybrid cloud architectures that meet these constraints while enabling the modernization utilities need. Our approach preserves air-gapped safety zones for critical control systems while creating secure pathways for telemetry data to reach cloud analytics platforms. We do not ask utilities to choose between compliance and capability — we architect both into the same infrastructure.
We work with electric utilities, water and gas providers, and renewable energy operators navigating the transition from legacy SCADA to modern hybrid architectures. Whether automating NERC CIP evidence collection, building real-time grid analytics platforms, or modernizing metering infrastructure, CloudForge delivers infrastructure that regulators approve and operators trust.
Critical infrastructure cannot fully migrate to public cloud due to reliability and regulatory constraints
Hybrid architectures with consistent management plane across on-premises, edge, and cloud environments
Aging control systems lack visibility, security, and integration with modern analytics platforms
Secure gateway architecture that extends SCADA telemetry to cloud while preserving air-gapped safety zones
NERC CIP, ISO 27001, and regional regulations demand rigorous evidence and access controls
Automated compliance monitoring with continuous evidence collection and audit-ready reporting
North American Electric Reliability Corporation Critical Infrastructure Protection standards governing bulk electric system cybersecurity with strict access control, monitoring, and incident response requirements
Information security management system certification providing the organizational framework for securing both IT and OT environments in utility operations
EU customer data protection for smart metering data, billing information, and customer account management in European energy markets
EU directive on security of network and information systems, classifying energy as an essential sector with enhanced cybersecurity obligations and incident reporting requirements
Comprehensive inventory of OT assets, security zones, communication paths, and regulatory obligations to establish the baseline for hybrid architecture design
Architecture that maintains NERC CIP security zone integrity while creating secure, auditable data paths from operational systems to cloud analytics environments
Secure SCADA gateways with encrypted telemetry, cloud-based historians, and real-time operational dashboards without modifying existing control system infrastructure
Automated NERC CIP evidence collection, compliance monitoring dashboards, and advanced grid analytics for outage prediction, load balancing, and asset optimization
Electric utility with no cloud adoption due to NERC CIP constraints, running all workloads in aging on-premises data centers with rising maintenance costs and limited analytics capability
Hybrid architecture with Azure Arc managing on-premises and cloud resources through a single control plane, maintaining NERC CIP compliance while enabling cloud-based analytics and DevOps
Aging SCADA systems providing control room visibility only, with no historical data analysis, no remote monitoring capability, and manual data export for regulatory reporting
Secure SCADA gateway deployment with encrypted telemetry to cloud historians, web-based operational dashboards, and automated regulatory data exports saving 200+ manual hours annually
Utility lacking real-time grid visibility beyond control room SCADA, unable to predict outages, optimize load distribution, or analyze distributed energy resource impacts
Real-time grid analytics platform with outage prediction models, load optimization algorithms, and distributed energy resource management dashboards
Manual NERC CIP evidence collection consuming 2,000+ staff hours annually with inconsistent documentation quality and last-minute scrambles before audit periods
85% of NERC CIP controls automated with continuous evidence collection, real-time compliance dashboards, and audit-ready report generation reducing prep time by 70%
A regional utility with aging SCADA infrastructure was spending 2,000+ staff hours annually on manual NERC CIP evidence collection. No cloud analytics capability existed, outage prediction was reactive, and the on-premises data center was approaching end-of-life with rising maintenance costs.
CloudForge designed a hybrid cloud architecture with Azure Arc for unified management, secure SCADA gateways for operational data telemetry, and automated NERC CIP compliance pipelines. Grid analytics models were deployed for outage prediction and load optimization, with air-gap-preserving security architecture throughout.
CloudForge proved that NERC CIP compliance and cloud modernization are not mutually exclusive. Our regulators were impressed, our operators gained visibility they never had, and our compliance team finally stopped dreading audit season.
Hybrid cloud management extending cloud services to on-premises data centers, enabling consistent management, monitoring, and policy enforcement across hybrid infrastructure
Protocol translation and telemetry forwarding with unidirectional security enforcement, connecting legacy SCADA systems to cloud analytics without modifying control infrastructure
Secrets management deployed in both connected and air-gapped environments with offline seal/unseal operations and certificate management for encrypted telemetry
Industrial protocol bridges normalizing utility-specific protocols into standardized formats for cloud ingestion with quality-of-service guarantees
Infrastructure-as-code managing both on-premises and cloud resources with consistent provisioning, configuration management, and drift detection across hybrid environments
CloudForge has automated 85% of NERC CIP controls for energy clients, transforming compliance from a 2,000-hour annual burden into a continuous, largely automated process. Our compliance dashboards provide real-time audit readiness that regulators have praised as industry-leading, reducing audit preparation time by 70%.
We deliver 99.95% hybrid cloud uptime for critical infrastructure — meeting the availability standards that utilities are held to by regulators and the public. Our architectures are designed for the unique failure modes of hybrid environments, with automated failover between on-premises and cloud resources and graceful degradation patterns that prioritize safety over availability.
Our energy practice combines utility domain expertise with modern cloud architecture skills. We understand NERC CIP compliance requirements, SCADA system constraints, and grid operational realities alongside Kubernetes, Terraform, and cloud-native monitoring. This dual fluency lets us design architectures that both regulators and engineers approve of — the rare intersection where compliance enables rather than constrains modernization.
Partner with CloudForge to modernise, secure, and scale your energy & utilities technology stack.
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