Any shortcomings by Colonial would be especially egregious given its critical role in the U.S. energy system, providing the East Coast with 45% of its gasoline, jet fuel and other petroleum products.
Smallwood, a partner at iMERGE and managing director of the Institute for Information Governance, said he prepared a 24-month, $1.3 million plan for Colonial. While iMERGE’s audit was not directly focused on cybersecurity “we found many security issues, and that was put in the report.”
Colonial’s statements Wednesday suggest it may have heeded a number of Smallwood’s recommendations. In addition, it says it has active monitoring and overlapping threat-detection systems on its network and identified the ransomware attack “as soon as we learned of it.” Colonial said its IT network is strictly segregated from pipeline control systems, which were not affected by the ransomware.
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This is the May 13, 2021, edition of Boiling Point, a weekly newsletter about climate change and the environment in California and the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox.
Unless you’re an energy nerd like me, you probably don’t spend much time thinking about how utilities spend the money you pay them each month. You used a bunch of electricity or natural gas, and that’s what you’re getting charged for. Right?
Not quite! In addition to fuel costs, you’re also paying for repairs to old power plants, construction of electric wires and gas pipes, subsidies for energy-saving lightbulbs, discounts for low-income households, shareholder profit margins of about 10%.
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Biden Takes Executive Action to Strengthen National Cybersecurity, Secure Supply Chains
The Biden administration this week issued a new spate of actions to bolster the nation’s cybersecurity, though details of its 100-day plan issued last month to address risks to the U.S. bulk power system (BPS) remain scant.
In a May 11 notice, the president said his administration would continue, for one year, a national emergency declared by President Trump in May 2019 to secure the information and communications technology and services supply chain. And on May 12, Biden signed a lengthy executive order (EO) to modernize cybersecurity defenses of federal networks, improve public-private information sharing, and strengthen the U.S.’s ability to respond to cyberattack events.
Duke Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority TVA announced shifts in their respective goals to become carbon neutral. In its annual sustainability report, Duke Energy discussed its plan to nearly triple the renewable energy share of its energy mix.