President Biden said Monday he will tap Jen Easterly, who served as cyber policy lead for his transition team, to head the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Jen Easterly, prospective CISA director, at the Future Security Forum in 2019 | Clarissa Villondo, CC BY-SA 2.0,...

FERC’s proposal for incentivizing public utilities to invest in cybersecurity improvements provoked a range of reactions from industry stakeholders in the comment period that closed earlier this week (RM21-3). The commission introduced the proposed incentive structure in December, building on a white paper published last June that sought to build...

Energy resilience is an essential but still poorly understood concept, and considerable work is needed from all industry stakeholders in order to properly appreciate its value, according to a recent white paper from the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI). The organization published the "Value of Resilience" white paper both to...

Ensuring the resilience and security of the energy sector will require strong leadership from the Department of Energy, according to a letter sent to Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm last month by leaders of the National Association of State Energy Officials (NASEO), the Business Council for Sustainable Energy (BCSE), and the...

February’s winter storm outages in Texas signal a need for a broader re-examination of the electric grid and its preparation for extreme weather events of all kinds, members of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations heard on Wednesday. NERC CEO Jim Robb | U.S. House Energy...

Electric distribution systems that carry energy to end consumers are highly vulnerable targets for cyberattacks, but these risks are "not fully" addressed by the Department of Energy’s cybersecurity strategy, according to a new report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. GAO’s "Electric Grid Cybersecurity" report draws on interviews with officials...

FERC on Thursday threw out on technical grounds a complaint by the activist group Californians for Green Nuclear Power (CGNP) against multiple agencies, closing another door on the nonprofit’s attempt to stop the closure of Pacific Gas and Electric’s Diablo Canyon Power Plant (EL21-13). In denying the complaint against CAISO,...

FERC on Thursday approved revisions to three of NERC’s critical infrastructure protection (CIP) reliability standards, submitted last year under Project 2019-03 (Cybersecurity supply chain risks). The commission’s order approved the following standards: CIP-005-7: Cybersecurity — Electronic security perimeter(s) CIP-010-4: Cybersecurity — Configuration change management and vulnerability assessments CIP-013-2: Cybersecurity —...

In letters issued Wednesday, a bipartisan group of lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives’ Energy and Commerce Committee requested an update from heads of several federal agencies — including Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm — on their response to last year’s SolarWinds cyberattack. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm | Department of...

The February winter storm and resulting dayslong outages in Texas loomed large over Thursday’s meeting of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, with members pressing representatives of the electricity sector for an explanation of the events and assurances that they are working to prevent future mass failures. Sen. Joe...