Tim McElligott Blog: Smart Grid — A Dangerously Dumb Idea

Melissa Hathaway, who was Acting Senior Director for Cyberspace for the National Security and Homeland Security Councils and presumed appointee to the post of National Cyber Advisor (Cyber Security Czar) before she resigned last summer, had a strong warning for the Obama administration, the utility and communications industries and other perhaps over-enthusiastic proponents of smart grid (like me) in a Scientific American column this week. She said, “As currently envisioned … it’s a dangerously dumb idea."

I questioned last week the position some energy companies have taken regarding the reliability of the telecom network. Basically, it isn’t reliable enough for them to consider using for their next generation communications needs related to smart grid. But they weren’t talking security, they were talking downtime.

Hathaway, on the other hand, is right. In the same way that telcos for too long saw BSS and OSS as an afterthought in the rush to create the Intelligent Network and then the packet-based network, the money behind the smart grid may be leading energy and telecom companies to do likewise when it comes to security. That would be dumb.

The Stuxnet worm that attacked an Iranian nuclear facility this week should serve as a wake up call to recognize how the power grid would be a major target when all hooked up to the IP-based Internet. 

Hathaway called for a partnership among standards setters to build security into the system from the ground up. Perhaps she should talk to George Arnold over at NIST if she hasn’t already. And I know of a new forum you’ll hear about next week. But the bottom line is, if Hathaway is sounding the alarm, the alarm should be heeded. You don’t walk away from the Czarship of Cyber security unless you have the guts and the desire to tell it like it is.

Then again, there was an awful lot of political maneuvering going on at the time of her transition from the Bush administration to the Obama administration. And for all we know it could still be going on. Cyber security is one of those things one would hope wouldn’t be politicized. But what isn’t these days?

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