Collaboration is key to energy sector cyber defense

Energy is a backbone of society, and there are many direct connections between energy use and quality of life. Reliable access to electricity has proven to reduce poverty — alongside other efforts around sanitation, nutrition and access to clean water — while minimizing the emission of home pollutants and increasing opportunities for workers. This makes it both a highly desired commodity and a precious resource that the world needs to proactively protect.

Unfortunately, the energy industry is becoming an increasingly tempting target for cybercriminals and nation-states that seek to disrupt basic services and the local economy. Recent ransomware attacks on Colonial Pipeline in the U.S., Vestas in Denmark and Electrobras in Brazil disrupted energy supply chains and forced a degradation of service throughout the regions. In each of these cases, malicious actors breached an end device and laid low for weeks or months while slowly and deliberately probing the network in search of a tempting target. Once the attackers got the lay of the land, they seized control over critical assets, took them offline and held them for ransom.