Protecting Critical Energy Infrastructure at Home
Posted November 30, 2009 at 12:42 pm 
Filed in: Last December, an ice storm in the northeastern United States caused damage to utility poles and wires, and left as many as one million people without electrical power. With temperatures below freezing and officials warning that it could take days to restore the system, a state of emergency was declared in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and parts of Maine and New York. Several hundred thousand people had no power for up to a week. We have few ways to defend ourselves against such damaging weather events and instead rely on prompt and effective response systems. However, as people were forced from freezing homes to makeshift shelters the reality of the situation became even starker—lives are at risk when we have no power.
The U.S. electrical grid is vulnerable, and not only to natural attacks. Simply by its sheer scale, interconnectedness and strategic importance, the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems that monitor critical energy infrastructure (CEI) are an obvious target for those with the resources to inflict damage. The digitalization of modern energy infrastructure has made an attack on the U.S. electrical grid possible and the cyberspace threat is heightened because modern electricity grids have become more interoperable and remotely accessible.
We can improve our energy security by raising domestic production, reducing oil consumption in our vehicles and extending the use of renewables and nuclear, but even if the energy is on our shores and in our power plants, it must be protected as it travels to our businesses, institutions and homes (end users). In the past, external threats to our energy security have come in the form of unpredictable foreign suppliers or hijacked oil platforms. However, the world is changing, and cyberterrorism is becoming a very serious and very real threat to our national and economic security. The United States must begin to put in place a strategy to prevent cyberterrorism succeeding and prepare for a successful attack.
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