That’s why smart grid designers and operators need to account for cybersecurity from the inception of their projects.”Īnd the impact on utilities goes far beyond customers wanting to “steal” energy without being billed for it. You have to assume they are going to be exploited, because they are going to have vulnerability gaps for prolonged periods of time. This makes these devices inherently insecure. “They also have to confront the need to have services running on those devices as long as possible without disruptions, which reduces their ability to do routine security patching. “Smart meter designers are not going to want to implement security on those devices-and in many cases, they simply don’t have the physical ability to do so.” “They’re typically running an embedded operating system, with low resources to devote to memory and other functionality,” he said. Rodillas pointed out, however, that like IoT devices, smart meters and other elements of smart electrical grids pose very real and potentially significant cyber risks. “They are usually very sensitive to being ‘internet-safe,’ and they intuitively realize that adding smart meters and systems like advanced metering infrastructure to their grids has the potential for real downside if security is not planned for and properly deployed.” “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.
ATTACKS ON SMART GRIDS MANUAL
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.
ATTACKS ON SMART GRIDS SOFTWARE
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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