US Plans Investment In Building Secure Smart Grid

White House officials unveiled a series of initiatives designed to help implement information technology to the US national power grid to make it smarter, more efficient and secure.

The US National Science Technology Council outlined its plans to modernise the power grid in rural areas and to create a “smart grid innovation hub” in a reported titled Building the 21^st Century Grid. The hub will be a collaboration of federal researchers, companies and utility executives and will support research, development and deployments of smart grid technology.

Better Security Against Attack

The Obama administration has particularly emphasised grid security issues. The modernisation of the power grid will allow operators to have access to information about threats to the power grid, help companies deliver new security tools, and create security standards.

The United States needs a more reliable energy system to manage stresses on the grid, such as outages and peak-time demand, John Holdren, the director of the White House Office and Science Technology Policy, said at a press conference.

The project announcements are timely, considering the latest report on cyber-threats facing utilities and power generation companies from PricewaterhouseCoopers, also released June 13. Several multi-national energy companies recently suffered security breaches long before the victims became aware that their systems had been compromised, the report found. It was a situation of “not knowing until it was too late”, the authors wrote.

Contrary to popular opinion, cyber-crime is a risk to all industries and are not limited to just companies dealing with personal customer information or processing e-commerce transactions. Energy companies are vulnerable because they have valuable proprietary data on discoveries and financial information relating to existing power and fuel reserves, according to the report. State-sponsored foreign attackers will use “highly sophisticated methods” to compromise these targets, the authors wrote.

“Had digital evidence and breach indicators been recognised at the time of an event, victims of cyber-crime could have taken positive action and minimised their risk,” the report said.

Beyond Service Disruption

Technologies such as smart grid, advanced metering infrastructure and modern control systems adds to the growing cyber threats and associated risks. The true cost of a security breach goes beyond initial data loss or service disruption – resulting in potential financial losses, intellectual property theft, fraud, diminished shareholder value, and reputational damage, the report found.

NitroSecurity will be adding a new product to its line of industrial control system security information and event management (SIEM) portfolio to securely manage smart grid deployments, Eric Knapp, the director of critical infrastructure markets for NitroSecurity, told eWEEK. The NitroView SIEM currently provides real-time visibility across both the business and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) networks within energy utilities, according to Knapp.

The new version would add support for devices, protocols and applications specifically used in intelligent distribution and metering on smart grids, Knapp said.

Traditionally, the energy infrastructure’s “greatest defence” was its obscurity and isolation in terms of systems and protocols, according to Knapp. Smart meters and other connected systems will result in an “exponential” increase in endpoints and associated data that would utilities would need to monitor and manage, Knapp said.

“The industry needs to move quickly to establish a level of real-time security intelligence for the Smart Grid, because the threat is real,” Knapp said.

The White House will advance its smart-grid goals with new programmes and initiatives to coordinate between the private sector and various federal agencies. The Obama administration has already invested $4.5 billion in recovery investments into smart grid projects, along with the $5.5 billion investment from private funds, government officials said.