Category Archives: Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery System

Department of Energy strategy aims to make power systems more resilient to hacking

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Citing an increase in criminal and nation-state hackers targeting the energy sector, the Department of Energy has released a five-year strategy to cut down on the risk of power-supply disruptions resulting from cyber incidents. “Despite improving defenses, it has become increasingly difficult for energy companies to keep up with growing and aggressive cyberattacks,” the document states. The department is trying to change that dynamic through a strategy to boost threat-sharing with the private sector, curb supply-chain risk, and accelerate research and development to make energy systems more resilient to hacking. The strategy will serve as a roadmap for the new Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response, for which President Donald Trump’s fiscal 2019 budget requests $96 million. “Today, any cyber incident has the potential to disrupt energy services, damage highly specialized equipment, and threaten human health and safety,” Bruce Walker, an assistant secretary of Energy, wrote in the […]

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Electric grid hacking exercise reveals shortfalls of security clearance shortage

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As foreign hackers continue to probe the U.S. grid for weaknesses, a cyber exercise for the North American energy sector has shown that many utility personnel still lack access to the classified information needed to stay on top of the threat. Not enough utility employees had the clearances needed to share threat information for a serious cyberattack scenario rehearsed during the exercise, according to a report published Friday by regulator North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC). “Government should plan to quickly declassify information that utilities need to prevent or respond to attacks,” the report states. During the two-day exercise, which took place in November, government officials and utility executives worked together to respond to simulated “cyber and physical attacks” against control systems and generation and transmission facilities “that caused widespread and prolonged power outages,” the report notes. Energy industry officials have long urged the U.S. government to expedite the clearance […]

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Department of Energy would get new cybersecurity office under White House proposal

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A new office would be created in the Department of Energy to monitor and improve energy sector cybersecurity under the president’s proposed budget for fiscal 2019. Named the the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), the office would “focus on energy infrastructure security and support the expanded national security responsibilities assigned to the Department of Energy.” CESER would take over responsibilities covered elsewhere in the Energy Department budget: the Cybersecurity for Energy Delivery System (CEDS) and the Infrastructure Security and Energy Restoration (ISER) programs. Those programs would see their expected spending go up by about 42 percent collectively and would be folded into CESER. CEDS and ISER have about $45 million and $10 million, respectively, in expected spending in fiscal 2018. Under CESER, spending on those accounts would increase to $70 million and $18 million, respectively. An additional $8 million would go toward “program direction,” which describes efforts to manage the […]

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