Communications of the ACM
Report: Efforts to Secure Nation
North American electrical grid
U.S. Commerce Department
The official government cybersecurity standards for the electric power grid fall far short of even the most basic security standards observed by noncritical industries, according to a new audit.
The standards have also been implemented spottily and in illogical ways, concludes a Jan. 26 report from the Department of Energy’s inspector general. And even if the standards had been implemented properly, they "were not adequate to ensure that systems-related risks to the nation's power grid were mitigated or addressed in a timely manner."
At issue is how well the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, has performed in developing standards for securing the power grid, and ensuring that the industry complies with those standards. Congress gave FERC jurisdiction in 2005 over the security of producers of bulk electricity—that is, the approximately 1,600 entities across the country that operate at 100 kilovolts or higher. In 2006, FERC then assigned the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC), an industry group, the job of developing the standards.
From Wired
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