Fixing Vulnerabilities
Steve Mitnick is President of Lines Up, Inc., Editor-in-Chief of Public Utilities Fortnightly, and author of “Lines Down: How We Pay, Use, Value Grid Electricity Amid the Storm.”
Saying that supply chain cybersecurity is an important topic for all of us in utility regulation and policy is like saying the COVID-19 pandemic is an important matter. Okay, major understatement.
Gosh, even the President is getting into the action, issuing an Executive Order on supply chain cybersecurity. And this on top of NERC's CIP-013 — thirteen an unlucky number since the Last Supper — with a first of October deadline for the myriad FERC-jurisdictional companies. So, utilities, non-utility generators, regional transmission organizations, et cetera are gearing up to tighten up the vulnerabilities in the gazillion electronic pieces that reliable grid operations depend upon. Many of which are manufactured in part or in whole in countries with tendencies adversarial to the United States.