NERC holds annual grid security conference to highlight industry best practices

The North American Electric Reliability Corp. (NERC) recently held its annual grid security conference where attendees discussed potential cyber and physical security threats facing power grids across North America.

Presentations included grid security perspectives from Canadian utilities, the ongoing grid security collaboration between utilities from the United States and Canada and government agencies and lessons learned from the 2015 Ukrainian power grid attack.

Additional presentations included planning for NERC’s GridEx IV, screening networks for cyber and physical security threats, U.S. government policy for unmanned aircraft systems and the use of electromagnetic pulses.

“One challenge industry must address is our presence and breadth of connectivity on the internet,” Gerry Cauley, president and CEO of NERC, said. “We must decide what is essential and narrow potential access points. Limiting online channels is a key lesson learned from the 2015 Ukraine incident. The Ukraine incident was a game changer. We are much better prepared in the United States and Canada, but it represents a new challenge for the industry.”

Keynote speakers at the conference included Hydro-Quebec TransEnergie President Marc Boucher and Natural Resources Canada’s Assistant Deputy Minister of Major Projects Terry Hubbard.

“This is NERC’s sixth year hosting GridSecCon, a vital forum that brings together the electricity sector’s foremost security experts to share best practices on the right tools, training and strategy for mitigating cyber and physical threats to the grid,” Marcus Sachs, senior vice president and chief security officer of NERC’s Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said. “Key among these tools is developing and disseminating actionable Intelligence.”