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."

Comments

As long as we have centralized power distribution

[gestalt_n_pepper]

on a large scale, it's indefensible. If we had a thousand dams with many thousands of small generators, many thousand solar installations on every structure in the country where it made sense, many thousands of tiny wind farms, many thousands of small geothermal generators, and so on, with passive protection from overload for all, this wouldn't be an issue. For that matter, neither would fuel shortages, at least as far as electricity goes.