White House Releases Report On Electricity Sector State Of Preparedness To Cyber Attacks

Norma M Krayem is a Senior Policy Advisor in Holland & Knight's Washington D.C. office

On May 30, 2018, the White House released a key report, entitled "Assessment of Electricity Disruption Incident Response Capabilities," which was required by the May 2017 White House Cybersecurity Executive Order 13800 discussed in a prior blog. The report, written by the U.S. Departments of Homeland Security (DHS) and Energy (DOE), reviews the state of preparedness by the electricity sector and its ability to manage cybersecurity attacks, with a focus on how such respective attacks would impact other sectors. The level of risk to the U.S. was reviewed using three levels of evaluation looking at impacts on 1) the economy, 2) national security and 3) public health and safety.

Importantly, the report states that the "electric grid is reliable" and cites to the maturity of the industry's traditional emergency plans and response mechanisms for physical emergencies, as well as the current stakeholder incident response capabilities. However, it does state that "power restorations following a significant cyber incident could be more challenging than previously experienced." The report refers to concerns that the industry would be "stressed" by any major cybersecurity incident and uses the cybersecurity attack against the Ukraine as a case study to illustrate the risks.

The report identifies the potential for a large impact on the economy where "blackouts of large scale or long duration can easily result in economic costs of many billions of dollars." It defines the power grid as "vital to the U.S. national defense and homeland security" with national security risks that can impact the communications, transportation, health and emergency service sectors...