Well begun truly is half done, but with cybersecurity, it’s still hard to progress beyond initial steps like updating passwords and segmenting networks with managed Ethernet switches used as firewalls to monitor network traffic, detecting suspicious behavior, and responding to threats and attacks.
“We started our cybersecurity journey at the tail end of a smart grid deployment when we realized we had a large amount of data that wasn’t going to be useful if we couldn’t operationalize it, which meant we had to get comfy with our security group,” says Jason Nations, senior enterprise security manager at OGE Energy Corp., Oklahoma City, who spoke at ARC Industry Forum 2019 earlier this year in Orlando. OGE is a vertical electric utility that uses natural gas, coal, wind and solar sources to generate power for 700,000 customers in Oklahoma and western Arkansas. “We inventoried all our assets and connection, and used a line-item diagram, so we knew every cable and what it was connected to, including showing what sensors were needed. However, we also learned cybersecurity is a people problem as much as it’s a technical one, and…
