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Biden administration releases 100-day plan to address electric system…

The plan focuses largely on supply chain risks to the electric grid, requests input on the DOE’s role in coordinating cybersecurity efforts.

On April 20, the Biden administration, through the United States Department of Energy (DOE), issued what it is calling its 100-day plan to address cybersecurity risks to the US electric system. The plan is a coordinated effort among DOE, the electricity industry, and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). It “represents swift, aggressive actions to confront cyber threats from adversaries who seek to compromise critical systems that are essential to US national and economic security,” according to the announcement.

The idea is that DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), working with utilities, will “continue to advance technologies and systems that will provide cyber visibility, detection, and response capabilities for industrial control systems of electric utilities.” To achieve this goal, the efforts undertaken in this “sprint” focus on encouraging power grid players to:

  1. Implement measures or technology that enhance their detection, mitigation and forensic capabilities.
  2. Deploy technologies that enable near real-time situational awareness and response capabilities in the critical industrial control system (ICS) and operational technology (OT) networks.
  3. Enhance the security posture of their IT networks.
  4. Deploy technologies to increase the visibility of threats in ICS and OT systems.

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

 

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US bulk energy providers must now report attempted breaches

US bulk energy providers must now report attempted breaches as well as successful breaches. Guidance is murky over what constitutes an “attempted” breach.

One of the most pernicious aspects of the far-reaching and potentially devastating SolarWinds supply chain hack is that it successfully evaded detection for at least ten months by hiding inside seemingly normal software operations. The hack of SolarWinds’ Orion product enabled Russian actors to embed surveillance malware into widely used management software. It pushed the so-called SUNBURST malware deep into public and private networks using the invisibility cloak of ordinary activity, causing no harm or disruption as it silently operated.

The SolarWinds hack is largely considered a turbo-charged nation-state espionage campaign. Most experts, however, won’t rule out that out the possibility that the Russian intelligence team behind the breach weren’t also paving the way for attacks that could damage operations. One of the biggest concerns about the hack’s impact is how it affected the nation’s power grid.

New regulations aimed at spotting attempted compromises in the power grid that don’t cause damage, like SolarWinds, went into effect on January 1, 2021. It’s not at all clear that the new requirements will help the energy industry spot these kinds of attacks.

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

 

 

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New DOE document names China, Russia as threats to…

lead centered=”no”
A US Department of Energy RFI seeks information on energy industry’s supply chain security practices following executive order to develop industry regulations.
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On May 1, the Trump Administration issued an Executive Order on Securing the United States Bulk Power System that seeks to remove from the power grid crucial electric equipment supplied by vendors from foreign adversarial nations. Yesterday, the Department of Energy (DOE), Office of Electricity issued a request for information (RFI) “seeking information to understand the energy industry’s current practices to identify and mitigate vulnerabilities in the supply chain for components of the bulk-power system (BPS).”

The RFI is a follow-on to the executive order (EO), which directs the Energy Department, in consultation with other agencies, to develop regulations implementing its goals through a rulemaking process. The EO defines electric equipment as items used in substations, control rooms and power generating stations, including reactors, capacitors, substation transformers, large generators, voltage regulators, along with several other defined pieces of electrical equipment.

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.

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Executive order boots “foreign adversaries” from US electric grid…

lead centered=”no”White House action implies that China is “creating and exploiting” vulnerabilities in the US power grid. Experts say hardware backdoors have the potential for doing significant damage./lead

On May 1, the Trump Administration issued an Executive Order on Securing the United States Bulk-Power System. According to the order, the administration found that “foreign adversaries are increasingly creating and exploiting vulnerabilities in the United States bulk-power system, which provides the electricity that supports our national defense, vital emergency services, critical infrastructure, economy, and way of life.”

The executive order (EO), which also encompasses “malicious cyber activities,” determines “that the unrestricted foreign supply of bulk-power system electric equipment constitutes an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States.” It declares “a national emergency with respect to the threat to the United States bulk-power system” and prohibits the purchase or installation of specific equipment from foreign adversaries.

The prohibition applies to only a specified list of electrical equipment that poses an undue risk of sabotage or subversion of the equipment’s design, or poses a national emergency with respect to the threat to the United States bulk-power system or otherwise poses an unacceptable risk to the national security of the US or the security and safety of US persons. The order requires the energy secretary to work with other agencies “to identify bulk-power system electric equipment that poses the types of risks associated with prohibited transactions” and to adopt rules and regulations to implement the order within 150 days.

This article appeared in CSO Online. To read the rest of the article please visit here.