The Office of Electricity (OE) joins with organizations across the country in recognizing Cybersecurity Awareness Month. Cybersecurity is essential to protecting our national security and economic prosperity. At the Department of Energy, our emphasis on cybersecurity helps defend critical energy infrastructure against attacks and bolsters system resilience against disruptions.

The theme for Cybersecurity Awareness Month is “Our Shared Responsibility,” combining personal responsibility with our shared collective efforts. For OE, many of our recent activities highlight our cybersecurity focus:

  • North American Energy Resilience Model (NAERM): Cyber threats to our energy infrastructure continue to grow and evolve. In response, OE is developing the NAERM, a comprehensive resilience modeling system for the North American energy sector and its associated infrastructure. The NAERM will enable the identification of threats to energy infrastructure and provide enhanced situational awareness to minimize the impact of threats while increasing system resilience.
  • Security Investments for Energy Infrastructure: The Department of Energy and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) co-hosted a technical conference in March 2019 to discuss security practices to protect energy infrastructure. The conference also explored how federal and state authorities can provide incentives and cost recovery for security investments in energy infrastructure, particularly the electric and natural gas sectors.
  • Electricity Industry Technology and Practices Innovation Challenge (EITPIC): OE’s inaugural EITPIC challenge awarded more than $300,000 for seven winning ideas to make the nation’s electric grid stronger and more resilient. Through the challenge, OE sought ideas from industry, academia, and other innovators for technologies or solutions that can address existing or emerging vulnerabilities and threats to the electric sector or mitigate interdependencies between the electricity sector and other sectors.

Improving and protecting our nation’s electric grid is an essential national security priority. OE, along with our federal and industry partners, is working to strengthen grid cybersecurity. To learn more about OE’s programs, click here.