Assessing cybersecurity of the US power grid

Threats to the cybersecurity of the US power grid are on the rise and the issue is now on the radars of chief risk officers at utilities, rather than just IT heads. Alexander Osipovich investigates how the industry is responding and assesses the odds of a catastrophic attack

On August 19, 2006, operators of the Browns Ferry nuclear power plant in Alabama manually shut down the plant’s unit three reactor after its two main coolant pumps – whose continuous operation is needed to prevent a meltdown – simultaneously failed. Investigators later determined that the pumps had failed because of a ‘data storm’ on the plant’s internal computer network. For reasons that remain unclear, but that may have included a hardware glitch or faulty design, excessive traffic flooded the