Control Centre Cybersecurity - Smart Grid Forums

Ensuring the security and reliability of the control centre has never been a more urgent priority for power grid operators. As the nerve centre of the grid the control centre and its series of systems, now hyperconnected and cyber vulnerable, must be continually upgraded and improved to maintain grid stability in the midst of the most malicious cyberattacks being launched against the power grid.

In this 60-min webinar, speakers from Dragos, Sibelga, and Darktrace share their experiences of cybersecuring the control centre environment. They evaluate the evolving risk profile of the power grid control centre, determine the optimal application of defensive and offensive cybersecurity approaches for the OT environment, and explore new ways to boost workforce cyber awareness as we transfer more operations and maintenance activities to a remote access environment.

When OT cybersecurity leaders proactively strengthen the cybersecurity posture of their most critical assets, the control centre goes from being one of the most cyber vulnerable domains, to one of the strongest and most resilient, against even the most malicious nation state, cybercriminal and hacktivist attacks.

• Quantifying the risk of attack from nation state, criminal, and hacktivist groups in the next 2-3 years
• Determining the security vulnerabilities of legacy and next generation power grid control centre systems
• Identifying the potential threats posed by the integration of the grid with a multitude of new flexibility market players

Phil has worked in the Energy sector for the last 23 years and joined Dragos as Senior Director of Strategy in January 2022. He started in the Electricity Transmission sector as a substation engineer, and in the course of his career has worked in Electricity Transmission, Distribution & Generation, Gas Transmission, Distribution and Storage as well as in IT. For the last 5 years he has been leading the OT Security Program in National Grid for the UK and US and been a keen contributor to advance cyber security and resilience in the energy sector.

• Overcoming the challenges of keeping OT updated with state-of-the-art cybersecurity policies, procedures, and products
• Embedding a culture of security best practice through effective workforce cyber awareness training and reinforcement
• Building in high levels of security for remote access to support a variety of real-time operations and maintenance procedures

Peter is the Chief Information Security Officer at Belgian utility Sibelga. Peter studied at the Royal Military Academy and entered the workforce as a civil engineer for telecommunications at the MoD. After many years in pure IT (PABX, LAN, WAN, Project Management) at different levels, both in hardware and software, Peter made the move into Information Security and has been specialising in this area for the last 10+ years. As a security officer Peter has worked in several different industries; utilities, staffing, banking, manufacturing and retail. Peter is certified as CISM, C-CISO, ISO27k LI, ISO31000.

• Maximising the effectiveness of defensive cybersecurity solutions for the power grid control centre environment
• Leveraging AI&ML to ensure more accurate monitoring and intrusion detection capability in the control centre
• Evaluating the role of offensive cybersecurity for the OT environment as the threat landscape evolves

Prior to joining Darktrace, Toby spent 15 years in the UK Government’s cyber security threats response unit, including as the UK National Cyber Security Centre’s Deputy Technical Director for Incident Management. He has specialist expertise in Security Operations, having worked across Cyber Threat Intelligence, Incident Management, and Threat Hunting. He has presented at several high-profile events, including the NCSC’s flagship conference, CyberUK, the SANS CyberThreat conference, and the Cheltenham Science Festival. He was a lead contributor to the first CyberFirst Girls Competition, championing greater gender diversity in STEM and cyber security. Toby is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and holds a Master’s in Engineering from the University of Bristol.

Welcome to Cyber-securing Control Centres

Webinar Programme