Power outages in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City last week gave both officials and residents a taste of what it would be like if the power grid was interrupted. While none of them were due to cybersecurity attacks, the experience left many concerned. Indeed, such attacks could easily be done anywhere in the world, including the UK.
The U.S. Department of Energy already issued a report earlier this year that warned of immediate danger from cyber-attacks to the power grid. Edgard Capdevielle, CEO at Nozomi Networks commented below.
Edgard Capdevielle, CEO at Nozomi Networks:
“Outages, such as those experienced last week highlight the importance of the power grid in keeping cities moving, homes warm or even simply brewing coffee. Operators of industrial control systems need the ability to automatically identify potential issues in real-time – whatever is the underlying cause, to speed the investigation of incidents and ultimately contain attacks or system failures before significant damage can occur. Using advances in computer science, such as Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, such solutions build an internal representation of an industrial network and its physical processes. Baselines are established. Communication or process behavior that deviates from them is instantly detected and presented in consolidated, context-aware alerts. Having this operational visibility provides immediate insights for faster troubleshooting and remediation of cybersecurity and process issues. It also makes it easier for engineers and plant operators to identify affected devices and apply compensating controls before industrial process are impacted.”
