Working with Hank Kenchington of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Electricity Delivery and Energy Reliability (OE), Katie Jereza and Lindsay Kishter of Energetics Incorporated coauthored a four-page article addressing the energy sector's efforts to secure control systems against cyber attack. Featured in the February 2009 issue of The CIP Report (PDF 2.2 MB), "Faced with Cyber Threat, the Energy Sector Responds" outlines how public-private partnership has worked to make the sector's critical infrastructure more secure since the release of the Energetics-facilitated Roadmap to Secure Control Systems in the Energy Sector (PDF 2.1 MB).
Supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) and other control systems monitor and control critical functions in the energy, water, chemical, and other sectors, and face increasing threats from cyber attacks that could disrupt service or damage components. Coauthoring this article is one of many ways Energetics supports the analysis, facilitation, and communications needs of OE's National SCADA Test Bed (NSTB) Program, a national resource made up of five national laboratories that perform focused R&D and vulnerability testing on critical SCADA systems.
The article, which reached a new audience for the NSTB Program, highlights the achievements of the energy sector through greater public-private partnership, including:
- Formation of the Energy Sector Control Systems Working Group (ESCSWG), made up of private sector and government leaders, to help implement the Roadmap's vision and goals
- Assessment of 90% of the current market offering of control systems in the electric sector and 80% of the current market offering in the oil and gas sector
- Creation of the ieRoadmap, an interactive online tool where researchers have posted 63 control systems security projects and mapped them to Roadmap goals
- Training of more than 1,800 energy sector stakeholders on best practices for control systems security
The CIP Report is a monthly, electronic newsletter for professionals in industry, government, and academia who have an interest in critical infrastructure protection.