Plan to Dumb-Down the Power Grid In Name of Cybersecurity Passes Senate

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.nextgov.com/cybersecurity/2018/12/plan-dumb-down-power-grid-name-cybersecurity-passes-senate/153719/

By Aaron Boyd
Senior Editor
Nextgov
December 20, 2018

A push to secure the nation's electric power grid from cyberattacks by 
introducing analog stopgaps and redundancies passed the Senate late 
Wednesday.

The Securing Energy Infrastructure Act was introduced last year by Sens. 
Angus King, I-Maine, and Jim Risch, R-Idaho, and approved by the Energy 
and Natural Resources Committee in March. The bill requires the Energy 
secretary to establish a two-year pilot program to look at analog, 
nondigital and physical systems that can be incorporated into the power 
grid to mitigate the potential effects of a cyberattack -- what its 
authors have called a "retro" approach.

The genesis of the bill came after a 2015 cyberattack in Ukraine took down 
a significant portion of the country’s energy grid. Operators were able to 
get the systems back online relatively quickly using human-powered 
backups.

"For years we've seen the danger of cyberattacks grow as bad actors pursue 
larger and more sophisticated incursions on our vital systems, but the 
federal government's response has not matched the severity of these 
threats," King said in a statement after the Senate vote. "This 
commonsense, bipartisan bill is an important step in the right direction, 
and will help protect America's critical infrastructure from devastating 
attacks before they happen."

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