NextGov is reporting that the federal government is pushing energy and utility companies to ramp up cyber security measures across the board.
A report issued by The National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST, revealed significant shortcomings in major utility companies’ current security measures. James McCarthy, a senior security engineer at the NIST, explained that the decentralized identity management system used by most utility companies makes tracking individual employees after they leave their job “cumbersome and time-consuming, even error-prone.”
The lack of comprehensive security within utilities companies leaves consumers vulnerable to attacks and power outages. The federal government is currently lobbying for the industry to implement a more rigorous authentication system that would prevent unauthorized access with a higher degree of certainty then the system currently in place.
