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US One Step Closer To Electric Grid Cyberguards
coondoggie writes "The US Department of Energy this week officially opened up the bidding for a National Electric Sector Cyber Security Organization that would protect the nation's electrical grid from cyber attacks. According to the DOE, the agency has set an aggressive goal to meet the nation's need for a reliable, efficient, and resilient electric power grid, as well as improved accessibility to a variety of energy sources for generation. In order to achieve this, an independent organization is needed (PDF) to provide executive leadership to facilitate research, development, and deployment priorities; identify and disseminate best cybersecurity practices; organize the collection, analysis, monitoring, and dissemination of infrastructure vulnerabilities and threats; and enhance cybersecurity of the electric grid, including control and IT systems."
This seems similar to the InfraGard initiative, but standard operating procedure dictates our government must form another organization to oversee the preexisting organization that is involved the current organizations et al. Recursive agencies cost us money, and while I do advocate heavier infrastucture protection, hopefully this isn't just another bean-counting expenditure, but instead an operation that actually contributes to our infrastructure security.
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
seems that building an actual reliable & redundant power grid would be a better idea...
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
... who will monitor the cyberguards?
No, we should have both a secure infrastructure and an infrastructure that benefits from connecting to the public Internet. And a public Internet that benefits from connecting to the secure infrastructure.
What you're saying is like saying we shouldn't run railroads across the Wild West because it's Wild. We needed both complete railroad networks, and a governable West. And we got both. And then we got everything else that could follow on a governable, railroad accessible West.
The American Way is to do some things because not because they're easy, but because they're hard. Because those hard things yield the greatest rewards. Including proving we can do anything worthwhile we want, even when the easy cop out beckons.
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make install -not war
Some systems are properly a monopoly. The nation shouldn't have two Army services. In general security for a given political area, like nationwide, statewide or countywide are best (or perhaps just least badly) run by a monopoly governed by officials elected by the people. Certainly at the national level that is the case.
Outsourcing that job to a private corporation to hold the national monopoly is asking for trouble. There will be no pool of private competitors competing for that contract, because the national market supports only one vendor: the one who wins that contract. That circular setup means the benefits of competition to produce the best candidate will not.
There is plenty of room for outsourcing regional security work to vendors actually competing at that scale, if indeed there are multiple vendors of security to large power grids. Let the regional front line vendors compete to keep their contracts. But the monopoly at the top that actually manages those regions into a comprehensive, integrated national infrastructure defense should be within the government. Which is the only monopoly that has a chance to behave properly.
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make install -not war
Don't connect it to the internet!
"and it also doesn't mean that they can't have a private TCP/IP network that for sharing information among their various systems"
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Knowing that boundary is becoming increasingly difficult with our interconnected society. Not to mention, things like social engineering, rogue media (flash-drives etc...) are increasingly hard to regulate internally. A lot of these security issues also stem off an even more pivotal attack vector, the human element.
The engineers, programmers, and designers may be well aware of security practices and threats, but a blue-collar operator may not be as well versed in these areas. This leads to a crossroads: Do we focus on more 'intelligent systems' that are infallible (as much as they can be, and more than they are now), with the ability to be more secure, regardless of operator skill level? Or the alternative, entailing increased operator training?
Well planned systems are always fallible in the hands of the untrained, so I imagine the best scenario falls somewhere in between, but leaning towards the automated side, for systems are easier and cheaper to maintain in the long run if they are designed solid from the onset.
Which leads to a paradox. Contract bidding usually goes the cheapest route, which is almost always not the highest of quality. With these contractors spitting out unrefined systems at minimal-effort-maximal-profit mentality, we will always be behind the power curve (so to speak).
In the end, if and when an infrastructure attack does hit us hard, I imagine there will be less regret of preventative measures, and more blame flaming, for that is what we do as a country, isn't it?
'We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress.' RPF
And then someone splices onto an ethernet connection of the trusted network and brings the whole thing down. Which is easy, since that network is all over the place.
An air-gap solution is one quick and simple line of defense, sure. But I'd rather have real cryptographically-secure authentication on all the relevant systems than an air-gap defense.
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
I can already look at my "Smart" meter on the Net. now if I could just write to it. anyone know how to jailbreak a electric meter?
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
I thought Texas was just a honeypot for Teabaggers.
Install dictators in foreign nations with lots of oil, then replace them when they get uppity?