Evolving Cybersecurity Issues in the Utility Industry
Full Title of Reference
Evolving Cybersecurity Issues in the Utility Industry
Full Citation
Earl Perkins, Evolving Cybersecurity Issues in the Utility Industry, published by Gartner Research, 20 August 2009.
Categorization
Issues: Private Critical Infrastructure, Electrical Grid, Water, Sewer, etc., Public-Private Cooperation
Key Words
Synopsis
This research explores significant cybersecurity issues for global utilities and offers a means to address them. It is past time to implement a top-down approach to address utility cybersecurity.
Key Findings:
- Cybersecurity oversight for utilities at all levels is unclear and requires consolidation and
development.
- Cybersecurity and physical security for utilities are critical, but neither is well-defined
technologically or in policy terms.
- While traditional IT cybersecurity can provide a foundation, utility operations security
does have distinct differences due to environment and requirements.
- Too much discussion about smart-grid security, supervisory control and data acquisition
(SCADA) security, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) security, or securing "cyberassets" focuses inordinately on the technical standards and products rather than on delivering a solution.