PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD
PLANNING AND LEADERSHIP FOR A BETTER WORLD The power industry needs to find a way to implement security strategies for Smart Grid technology now lest it face the prospect of having to “fix the car while driving at full speed,” a leader in critical infrastructure security warned on Monday.
Though the Smart Grid has a lot of potential to improve the way we deliver power, the flip side of this new paradigm is that the extra connectivity necessary to run it puts the power infrastructure at risk unless security strategies are evolved with the grid. So says Tyler Williams, CEO of Wurldtech Security Solutions, a company well-known for cyber-security testing and certification within the critical infrastructure regions.
On Monday, Wurldtech announced a joint partnership with the University of British Columbia (UBC) in Vancouver to open a new Cyber Security Research Institute and Global Center of Excellence for energy infrastructure. Funded by a mix of public-private money from energy companies, government agencies and other industry entities, the UBC Center of Excellence will be home to a new cyber-security research and assessment team and a multimillion-dollar test bed that reproduces the high-availability control networks and advanced metering technology that run the Smart Grid. Additionally, the center will be responsible for developing and maintaining a Web-based knowledge portal for industry insiders to receive cyber-security training on issues pertaining to the Smart Grid.
"The Smart Grid is critical to our sustainable energy future," Williams said in a statement accompanying the announcement, "but the bulk power industry has had little necessity for cyber-security in the past because critical control networks were isolated from the litany of IT threats that could jeopardize process integrity and reliability. The advantages of Smart Grid, however, require increased connectivity, including a reliance on the Internet, and if we don't move quickly to make functional security an integral part of the Smart Grid initiatives, we may find ourselves [in an] unfavorable position.”
As a part of its announcement, Wurldtech also unveiled adjustments to its security testing platform, Achilles Satellite, to account for Smart Grid technology. Williams says that, with its release, Wurldtech hopes to help early efforts as energy companies strive toward developing better standards for Smart Grid technology.
"Consensus-based standards efforts by definition take a long time, and we are fooling ourselves by expecting to have meaningful security and interoperability standards out for the Smart Grid in the timeframes being considered,” he said, “especially if we seek heterogeneity, scalability and broad-based stakeholder cooperation. Unfortunately, many also see regulation and public sector involvement as the answer and do not realize that the 800lbs gorilla in the room may in fact do more harm than good."
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