Power Industry Seeks Ways to Protect Nation from Major Disaster

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PJMedia:

WASHINGTON — Government and power industry leaders want to improve the country’s weak defenses against a potentially catastrophic cyber-attack on the electric grid, but disagreements persist over the best approach to ensure collaboration between the public sector and the private sector.

 

What makes the electric grid an attractive target for cyber-attacks is its multiplier effect — an attack on one region or supplier can quickly ripple to others. Its vast infrastructure — from generation plants to substations — is spread over highly interdependent installations that are miles apart.

 

In addition, the grid makes an appealing target because of its exceptional vulnerability, which stems, in part, from its broad reach.

As past major outages have shown, a line outage or system failure in one area can lead to cascading effects in other areas. In 2003, a blackout across the Northeast, sparked by an overgrown tree near Cleveland, crippled commerce and transportation in the U.S. by cutting off power to 50 million people and causing up to $10 billion of damage to the economy.