Cybersecurity Center of Excellence to build security tools for small- and mid-sized electric utilities. (Photo: Sergei Malgavko / Contributor via Getty Images)
Recognizing that the electric utility industry needs an industry-specific response to its cybersecurity challenges, the New York Power Authority (NYPA) and Siemens Energy plan to develop a Cybersecurity Center of Excellence that will focus on building practical security tools for small- and mid-sized utilities.
Kenneth Carnes, vice president and CISO at NYPA, said many of the hundreds of those utilities that NYPA serves don’t have the resources for cybersecurity pros on staff. NYPA and Siemens aim to focus on visibility into OT systems, a longstanding problem for utilities, staff development that’s specific to the utility industry and innovating new products that are based on the special needs of the industry.
“There are a lot of courses people can take to run forensics on a PC or wipe data,” Carnes said. “But how do you do that on OT equipment that has embedded computer systems and runs over industry-specific protocols?”
The issue of locking down OT systems for the electric grid in the U.S. hit home in the summer of 2018 when it came out that the Russian DragonFly APT group accessed utility networks in the United States. A year later, there were extensive reports that the North American Electric Reliability Corp. found that a cyberattack hit a grid control center and several small power generation sites in the Western United States, causing low-impact outages that lasted roughly five minutes.
Leo Simonovich, head of industrial cybersecurity at Siemens Energy, added that it ..
Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.
