Washington —
Every day the energy sector faces a barrage of cyber attacks, and just about once a day an attack is novel, something the industry has not seen before but must defend against.
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Whether hackers are hoping for financial gain or to disrupt the grid, utilities, pipeline companies and federal agencies have no choice but to prepare.
“The problem is there are an infinite number of ways that you can create malware, that you can attempt intrusions,” John Bryk, a cyber and physical threat intelligence analyst with the Downstream Natural Gas-Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said in a recent interview. “There’s always going to be something new.”
The center, launched by natural gas utilities in 2014 to help them prepare for and better understand threats, aggregates cyber risk data to spot trends and communicate back to companies.
Cyber attacks that could cause physical damage are becoming more common. Although an attack is unlikely to bring down the entire grid, the risks have caused some…
