From Grid to Insight: Building a Compliant, Secure Lakehouse for Energy & Utilities with Dremio

The Energy and Utilities industry sits at the intersection of two worlds: critical infrastructure and rapid digital transformation. Power grids, pipelines, and water systems increasingly rely on data-driven operations, from real-time monitoring of SCADA systems to predictive maintenance powered by machine learning. But with this opportunity comes immense responsibility. Strict regulations, such as NERC CIP for electric utilities, TSA pipeline security directives, IEC 62443 for control systems, and the EU’s NIS2 directive, demand rigorous safeguards for cybersecurity, data access, and operational resilience.

Building a secure data platform in this environment isn’t just about compliance, it’s about maintaining public trust and ensuring uninterrupted service in the face of growing cyber threats. That’s where Dremio enters the picture. By combining open data standards like Apache Iceberg with enterprise-grade governance, fine-grained access controls, and performance acceleration, Dremio enables Energy and Utilities companies to unify their data, protect it at every layer, and empower secure analytics across both IT and OT domains.

In this blog, we’ll explore the regulatory landscape shaping Energy and Utilities data platforms, the challenges it creates, and how Dremio provides a modern, compliant, and future-proof foundation for secure data-driven operations.

Why Energy & Utilities Data is Uniquely Hard

Energy and Utilities companies face some of the most complex data challenges of any industry. Unlike sectors where data primarily lives in business systems, E&U must manage the convergence of operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT).

On one side, OT systems like SCADA, IoT sensors, and historian databases produce massive volumes of time-series and event-driven data critical for real-time monitoring and grid stability. On the other, IT systems, from ERP to customer billing platforms, generate transactional, financial, and customer data. Both domains are sensitive, and both are heavily regulated, but they operate under very different priorities: OT demands real-time reliability, while IT emphasizes compliance, governance, and reporting.

Adding to the complexity:

• Hybrid and distributed footprints – Energy companies run assets across power plants, substations, pipelines, and distribution networks, often spanning multiple regions and jurisdictions. Data must move securely between on-premises infrastructure and cloud platforms without compromising control.
  
• Cross-border regulations – Multi-national utilities must comply with overlapping regimes like NERC CIP in North America and NIS2 in the EU, making unified governance a daunting task.
  
• Data silos and duplication – Engineering, operations, compliance, and analytics teams often maintain separate copies of data, leading to inconsistencies and increased risk.
  
• High stakes – Unlike other industries, downtime or data misuse doesn’t just impact profits, it can affect public safety, environmental protection, and national security.
  

This combination of distributed infrastructure, diverse data types, and unforgiving compliance obligations makes building a secure, governed, and performant data platform uniquely challenging for the Energy and Utilities sector.

What Energy & Utilities Companies Must Comply With

Energy and Utilities organizations operate under one of the most demanding regulatory landscapes in the world. These frameworks are designed not only to protect sensitive data, but also to safeguard critical infrastructure and ensure uninterrupted service to millions of people. Let’s look at some of the most impactful regulations shaping data strategies in this sector:

• NERC CIP (North America – Electric Utilities): The North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s Critical Infrastructure Protection standards mandate strict cybersecurity practices for the Bulk Electric System. This includes access control, audit logging, incident response, and evidence retention, all of which must be demonstrable during compliance audits.
  
• TSA Pipeline Security Directives (United States – Oil & Gas): Following high-profile cyber incidents, the Transportation Security Administration issued directives requiring pipeline operators to implement cyber risk assessments, mitigation strategies, reporting mechanisms, and resilience testing. These directives continue to evolve, raising the bar for secure data management across pipeline operations.
  
• PHMSA Control Room Management (United States – Pipelines): The Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration enforces recordkeeping and operational oversight requirements for control room data, demanding robust retention and monitoring capabilities.
  
• NIS2 Directive (European Union – Energy Operators): The EU’s NIS2 directive extends cybersecurity and incident reporting obligations to more energy entities across member states. For multinational utilities, this means aligning policies across different legal frameworks while maintaining consistent data protections.
  
• IEC 62443 & NISTIR 7628 (Global Standards for OT & Smart Grids): These frameworks set cybersecurity requirements for industrial control systems and smart grids, ensuring that OT data is secured end-to-end, from field devices to enterprise analytics systems.
  
• DOE C2M2 (Maturity Model – U.S. Energy Sector): The Department of Energy’s Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model helps organizations benchmark their security posture across IT and OT, reinforcing the importance of integrated governance and continuous improvement.
  

Together, these regulations make clear that Energy and Utilities companies must not only protect their data but also demonstrate governance, auditability, and resilience at every layer. The challenge is aligning these compliance obligations with a platform that can still deliver fast, accessible insights for the business.

What These Obligations Mean for the Data Layer

Regulations like NERC CIP, TSA directives, and NIS2 don’t just dictate cybersecurity policies at the network or device level, they directly shape how data platforms must be designed and operated. For Energy and Utilities companies, compliance requirements translate into a clear set of data-layer capabilities that go far beyond traditional storage and analytics:

• Fine-Grained Access Control – Regulations demand strict enforcement of least-privilege access. This means the ability to secure data at the database, table, row, and even column level, ensuring engineers, analysts, and regulators see only what they are authorized to view.
  
• Comprehensive Auditability – Audit logs and evidentiary records must be complete, tamper-proof, and easily retrievable. From who queried what data, to when it was accessed, utilities must be able to demonstrate compliance during audits without disrupting operations.
  
• Encryption Everywhere – Both in transit and at rest, sensitive OT and IT data must be protected with strong encryption and robust secrets management to satisfy standards like IEC 62443 and NIS2.
  
• Unified Governance Across Hybrid Environments – With infrastructure spread across substations, control centers, on-prem data centers, and cloud platforms, governance policies must travel with the data, ensuring consistent protections regardless of where workloads run.
  
• Retention and Lineage – Regulations like PHMSA’s control room requirements place emphasis on retention and traceability. Companies must prove not just that data is stored securely, but also that its lifecycle, from ingestion to consumption, is transparent and documented.
  
• Operational Resilience – In an industry where outages can affect millions of customers, performance isn’t a “nice to have.” The platform must deliver fast, reliable access to data even under peak demand or cyber incident scenarios.
  

In short, Energy and Utilities firms need more than just a data warehouse or a data lake. They need a platform that marries compliance-grade governance with open standards, high performance, and flexibility, without locking them into proprietary stacks. That’s where Dremio shines.

Why Dremio is a Strong Fit for Energy & Utilities Security and Compliance

Meeting the regulatory and operational demands of the Energy and Utilities sector requires a platform that goes beyond traditional data warehouses and lakes. Dremio provides exactly that, a secure, open, and high-performance data platform that aligns with compliance obligations while enabling modern analytics and AI. Here’s how:

• Centralized Governance on Open Standards
  Dremio is built natively on Apache Iceberg, with its integrated Apache Polaris (incubating) catalog providing centralized governance and metadata management. This means utilities can enforce policies consistently across their hybrid and multi-cloud environments, while keeping data in an open format that’s interoperable with other engines.
  
• Fine-Grained Access Control
  Through robust role-based access control (RBAC), row-level filtering, and column-level masking, Dremio makes it simple to implement least-privilege policies. Integration with enterprise identity providers (OIDC, LDAP/AD) ensures access controls align with organizational security standards.
  
• Auditability and Transparency
  Dremio maintains detailed logs of all user activity, query executions, and dataset changes. These can be exported into SIEM platforms like Splunk or Datadog, making it easy to generate audit evidence for NERC CIP, TSA, or PHMSA compliance.
  
• Encryption and Secrets Management
  Data is protected with encryption in transit and at rest, along with secure credential storage and integration with tools like HashiCorp Vault. For cloud deployments, Dremio leverages disk encryption capabilities from providers such as Azure, AWS, and GCP.
  
• Performance Without Complexity
  Unlike traditional materialized views or cubes that require constant manual refresh, Dremio’s Reflections, including Autonomous Reflections, automatically accelerate queries. This ensures compliance-driven analytics and operational dashboards remain performant even during peak usage or crisis response events.
  
• Deployment Flexibility
  Whether deployed in the cloud, on-premises, or in hybrid models, Dremio provides the flexibility to meet the unique needs of utilities that must operate in air-gapped or highly regulated environments.
  

By combining open data standards with enterprise-grade security and performance, Dremio allows Energy and Utilities companies to simplify compliance, reduce risk, and unlock insights, without vendor lock-in.

Mapping Compliance Controls to Dremio Capabilities

For Energy and Utilities organizations, the challenge isn’t just knowing what the regulations require, it’s being able to demonstrate how your data platform enforces those requirements in practice. Dremio provides a direct line between regulatory obligations and technical capabilities, making compliance easier to prove and maintain.

Here’s how common requirements align with Dremio’s built-in features:

This direct mapping means that instead of stitching together point solutions to cover compliance gaps, Energy and Utilities companies can rely on Dremio as a secure foundation that unites governance, performance, and openness in a single platform.

Reference Architecture for Energy & Utilities

Designing a secure and compliant data platform in Energy and Utilities requires careful consideration of both operational technology (OT) and information technology (IT). A modern architecture powered by Dremio makes it possible to unify these domains while enforcing governance and maintaining performance.

1. Data Zones for Governance and Clarity

• Raw Zone: Ingest OT data from SCADA, IoT sensors, and historian systems, along with IT data from ERP, billing, and CRM platforms. Store this data as immutable files in object storage or on-premises systems.
  
• Governed Zone: Organize data into Apache Iceberg tables within the Dremio-integrated Polaris (incubating) catalog. Apply role-based access, row- and column-level policies, and masking rules to enforce regulatory requirements.
  
• Semantic Zone: Publish curated, business-ready views for compliance teams, engineers, and analysts. These views simplify access while hiding sensitive details behind policy-driven protections.
  

2. Security and Access Control
Dremio enforces access control directly at the catalog and dataset level, ensuring consistent security regardless of the workload or user. Single Sign-On (SSO) integration with enterprise identity providers allows centralized management of permissions across IT and OT users.

3. Observability and Audit Logging
Audit logs are routed to SIEM systems like Splunk or Datadog, providing real-time visibility into who is accessing what data. This streamlines the process of producing evidence for regulators such as NERC or PHMSA.

4. Performance with Autonomous Reflections
Dremio’s Reflections accelerate queries transparently, automatically adapting to workload patterns. During peak demand, like a grid stress event or emergency pipeline response, analytics remain fast and reliable without manual cube management.

5. Flexible Deployment
Whether running in the cloud, on-premises, or in hybrid environments, Dremio’s deployment flexibility ensures Energy and Utilities companies can meet their unique infrastructure needs, including air-gapped systems in control rooms.

This layered architecture ensures that sensitive OT and IT data can coexist securely, compliance requirements are baked into the platform itself, and operational insights are delivered with the speed and reliability critical to the sector.

Implementation Checklist for Energy & Utilities

Designing the right architecture is only part of the journey, execution matters just as much. For Energy and Utilities organizations, implementing Dremio as a secure and compliant data platform can follow a clear set of steps to ensure alignment with regulatory mandates and operational needs:

1. Integrate Enterprise Identity
   
   • Connect Dremio to your existing identity provider (OIDC, LDAP/Active Directory).
     
   • Define organizational roles that align with regulatory frameworks (e.g., operators, auditors, engineers, compliance officers).
     
2. Codify Access Policies
   
   • Use role-based access control (RBAC) to enforce least-privilege principles.
     
   • Apply row- and column-level security to mask sensitive operational or customer data.
     
   • Optionally integrate with Apache Ranger for policy management at scale.
     
3. Enable Comprehensive Auditing
   
   • Activate Dremio’s audit logging features to capture all query activity and data access.
     
   • Route logs to SIEM platforms like Splunk or Datadog to centralize monitoring and streamline compliance reporting.
     
4. Secure Data in Transit and at Rest
   
   • Enable TLS encryption for all data transfers.
     
   • Configure at-rest encryption in cloud environments or integrate with on-premises key management systems.
     
   • Use secrets management solutions (such as HashiCorp Vault) to protect credentials and keys.
     
5. Define Retention and Lineage Practices
   
   • Leverage Apache Iceberg’s snapshot history to track changes and maintain retention policies.
     
   • Configure data lifecycle rules to align with PHMSA, NERC, or TSA evidence retention requirements.
     
6. Activate Performance Acceleration
   
   • Turn on Dremio Reflections to accelerate commonly used datasets.
     
   • Enable Autonomous Reflections so the system automatically optimizes workloads, ensuring queries remain performant during operational surges.
     
7. Validate and Monitor
   
   • Conduct regular penetration testing and compliance audits.
     
   • Monitor reflection efficiency, query latency, and user access patterns to maintain ongoing compliance and system resilience.
     

By following this checklist, Energy and Utilities companies can transform Dremio from a powerful analytics platform into a compliance-ready backbone for secure, governed, and performant data operations.

Case-Style Scenario: Compliance and Insights in Action

To see how this plays out in practice, let’s imagine a large utility company operating both electric and gas infrastructure across multiple states. This organization must demonstrate compliance with NERC CIP standards for its power grid while also adhering to TSA pipeline security directives for its gas transmission assets. At the same time, its compliance team, engineers, and analysts need timely access to both operational and business data.

Challenge:

• The compliance team must provide evidence of strict access controls and activity logs during an upcoming NERC audit.
  
• The pipeline operations team needs to analyze SCADA logs and sensor data to quickly detect potential anomalies and report incidents in line with TSA directives.
  
• IT and OT teams historically worked with separate copies of data, creating silos and inconsistent reporting.
  

Solution with Dremio:

• Unified Governance: Data from SCADA systems, historian databases, and ERP platforms is ingested into Apache Iceberg tables managed through Dremio’s integrated Polaris catalog. Access policies are applied once and enforced consistently across all datasets.
  
• Role-Based Security: Engineers have row-level access to operational telemetry, while compliance officers can view audit logs and aggregated metrics, without ever exposing sensitive raw data.
  
• Audit Logging: Every query and dataset interaction is captured and routed into Splunk, enabling real-time monitoring and a ready-made trail for NERC compliance evidence.
  
• Performance with Reflections: Dashboards monitoring grid stability and pipeline health run on top of Dremio Reflections, ensuring queries remain fast even during high-load periods such as severe weather events.
  
• Hybrid Deployment: While sensitive OT data remains in on-premises systems for security, business teams can query governed views from the cloud without replicating or duplicating data.
  

Outcome:
The utility demonstrates NERC CIP compliance with clear audit evidence, meets TSA pipeline reporting obligations through fast, reliable access to operational data, and empowers cross-functional teams with governed analytics, all without creating additional data silos or operational risk.

Risks & Pitfalls (and How Dremio Helps)

Even with the right architecture in mind, many Energy and Utilities organizations fall into common traps when trying to modernize their data platforms for compliance and analytics. These pitfalls can compromise both security and operational efficiency. Here’s where Dremio makes a difference:

1. Shadow Copies of Sensitive Data

• The risk: To meet departmental needs, teams often create their own versions of datasets. This leads to duplication of personally identifiable information (PII), inconsistent reporting, and expanded attack surfaces.
  
• How Dremio helps: By centralizing governance in the Apache Polaris catalog and enforcing row- and column-level policies at the view layer, Dremio ensures one governed source of truth that different teams can safely consume.
  

2. Cube Sprawl and Stale Extracts

• The risk: Traditional acceleration strategies rely on cubes or materialized views, which require constant manual refresh and quickly become stale or inconsistent. This is especially problematic when compliance audits demand up-to-date evidence.
  
• How Dremio helps: Dremio’s Reflections, including Autonomous Reflections, eliminate cube sprawl by automatically rewriting queries against optimized materializations. Analytics stay fresh and consistent without manual intervention.
  

3. Vendor Lock-In

• The risk: Proprietary platforms often trap organizations in closed ecosystems, making it costly to adapt when regulations or technologies evolve. This reduces flexibility in hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
  
• How Dremio helps: Built on open standards like Apache Iceberg and Polaris, Dremio ensures data remains portable and accessible across multiple engines. This avoids lock-in while future-proofing the platform for regulatory and operational changes.
  

4. Disconnected Governance Across Environments

• The risk: Hybrid operations across control rooms, on-premises data centers, and cloud platforms can lead to inconsistent application of security and compliance policies.
  
• How Dremio helps: Dremio applies governance policies consistently across all environments, with centralized catalog services that unify security controls and metadata management.
  

By anticipating these pitfalls and addressing them with Dremio’s open, governed, and high-performance architecture, Energy and Utilities companies can avoid costly mistakes while building a platform that is both compliant and resilient.

Conclusion: A Future-Proof Platform for Energy & Utilities

The Energy and Utilities industry faces some of the most demanding regulatory and operational pressures in the world. From NERC CIP requirements in the power grid, to TSA directives in pipelines, to the EU’s NIS2 obligations, the stakes are high: protect sensitive data, demonstrate compliance, and maintain uninterrupted service to millions of customers.

Traditional data warehouses and lakes struggle to keep up with these demands. They either lack the governance controls regulators require, or they force companies into brittle acceleration strategies and proprietary ecosystems. The result is higher cost, more complexity, and greater risk.

Dremio changes the equation. By unifying data on open Apache Iceberg tables, centralizing governance with the Polaris catalog, and delivering built-in fine-grained security, auditing, and encryption, Dremio allows Energy and Utilities companies to meet compliance requirements with confidence. At the same time, Reflections provide the performance needed to keep dashboards and analytics responsive, even during operational surges, without creating silos or stale data.

In short, Dremio provides Energy and Utilities companies with a secure, compliant, and future-proof data platform that reduces risk while enabling innovation. It’s not just about passing audits, it’s about building a foundation where compliance and analytics work hand-in-hand to support resilience, efficiency, and growth.

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