“Fortunately, electrical utilities already have a pretty heightened awareness of the importance of cybersecurity, because they understand they are high-visibility targets for hackers,” noted Del Rodillas, director of product marketing for industrial and IoT cybersecurity at Palo Alto Networks. public utilities-including a nuclear power plant-were victims of cyberattacks.Īnd it’s easy to understand the potentially devastating impact of cyberattacks rippling throughout vital aspects of our critical infrastructure, from traffic management systems to hospitals’ power-generation facilities.īut there are many other negative impacts of cyberattacks on our smart grids they may not be as life-threatening as turning off power to dialysis machines or heart monitors, but problems like “stolen” power, incorrect billing information, and unplanned downtime have the potential for massive economic, operational, compliance, and brand reputation damage to utilities and their customers. For all the benefits of smart grids-more accurate usage information, timely billing, customer visibility into energy trends, less reliance on manual activities-any network of smart devices can and will be susceptible to attack.įor instance, in 2015 Russian hackers subverted a smart power grid in the Ukraine, interrupting power to nearly a quarter-million customers, and two years later Irish electrical utilities and then U.S. In fact, the global market for smart grid solutions is expected to reach $60 billion by 2024, with ambitious rollouts of new systems and expansion of existing ones taking place around the world.īut just because we don’t have to worry about strangers lurking around our property doesn’t mean there isn’t the potential for substantial risk-cyber risk, that is. Smart electrical grids, comprised of smart meters and a variety of computers, communications networks and software tools, increasingly have become the method of choice for collecting electrical usage data. Today, electrical utilities have an entirely new way of capturing, sharing, analyzing, and reporting on electrical usage. But when she got here, she heaved a sigh of relief when she realized the stranger was simply an electrical utility technician reading the electrical meter. She slammed down the phone, jumped in her car and sped home. I was home alone after school, and as my mother trained me, I picked up the phone and called her at work to let her know about this dangerous stranger peeking around the property. When I was a kid, one day I saw a strange man lurking around the side of our house.
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