How to Protect the Electrical Grid From Cyber Attacks

Susan Phillips

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Susan Phillips tells stories about the consequences of political decisions on people's every day lives. She has worked as a reporter for WHYY since 2004. Susan's coverage of the 2008 Presidential election resulted in a story on the front page of the New York Times. In 2010 she traveled to Haiti to cover the earthquake. That same year she produced an award-winning series on Pennsylvania's natural gas rush called "The Shale Game." She received a 2013 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Journalism Award for her work covering natural gas drilling in Pennsylvania. She has also won several Edward R. Murrow awards for her work with StateImpact. In 2013/14 she spent a year at MIT as a Knight Science Journalism Fellow. She has also been a Metcalf Fellow, an MBL Logan Science Journalism Fellow and reported from Marrakech on the 2016 climate talks as an International Reporting Project Fellow. A graduate of Columbia School of Journalism, she earned her Bachelor's degree in International Relations from George Washington University.

June 12, 2012 | 2:45 PM

Stan Honda / AFP/Getty Images

Towers carrying electricity in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania from the Peach Bottom Atomic Power Station, a nuclear power plant in Delta, Pennsylvania.

A new report funded by the Department of Energy says cyber attacks that could disable the electrical grid could be more the stuff of Hollywood movies, than reality. So far the juice is still flowing to homes and businesses and no cyber attacks, criminal or otherwise, have shut down any power systems in the U.S. Still, it’s better to be safe than sorry. The National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners just released a report advising state regulators on how to prevent cyber attacks. The study says realistically, smaller attacks could mess things up without creating any blackouts.

“While natural disasters, human error, software bugs or equipment breakdowns can be the origins of a system failure, deliberate attacks involve the element of intent – a person at the other end of the operation with the capability to bring down a system specifically outside its existing protective barriers. Malicious attacks threaten utilities on multiple levels in ways that sometimes overlap and compound each other.”

The report breaks down the cyber-security threats into three areas: IT, supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, and the smart grid. As with anything, complete security is impossible. But it’s good to know someone is thinking about this.