The Energy Utilities Cyber Security Summit was held in London, on December 5th 2018, organized by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the United States Energy Association (USEA), and Edison Electric Institute (EEI).
The discussion of the panels focused on how the emergence of new technologies, including renewables, distributed generation and the Internet of Things is altering the security landscape of traditional utilities. In view of the increasing cyber security threats, it has been discussed how utilities are re-thinking their business and management processes to respond to such cyber security risks, in areas such as human resource management, procurement, information and operation technologies. The deployment of Information and Operations Technology Solutions to protect from cyber intrusions have also been analyzed.
Massimo Rocca, Chairman of EE-ISAC, was invited to intervene in the panel focused on the creation of a “circle of trust” by utilities to eneable the exchange of sensitive information in ISAC communities.
Gisele Widdershoven, EE-ISAC Board Member, held the afternoon panel on the second day of the Conference to focus on fostering trust and facilitating information exchange between electric utilities to improve the resilience of the grid to cyber attacks. She has discussed about the development of the platform for the secure exchange of threat data collected by utilities across Europe including data captured by advanced security systems. The focus was on enabling industry-wide responses to localise security incidents happening across the continent and on comparing security capabilities and solutions to ensure deployment of best-in-class tools. Lastly, she examined how to improve the timeliness and effectiveness of the response to cyber incidents and ensured a unified approach to talking threats to grid infrastructure.
