INDIA’S POWER GRIDS UNDER THREAT OF CYBER ATTACKS
A report calling for the development of a cyber crisis management plan to counter any possible attempt to breach the power grids is gathering dust.
India’s power grids are “highly” susceptible to cyber attacks from neighbouring countries, official sources told The Sunday Guardian. They stated that urgent action was required to be taken to isolate the critical part of the control rooms so that they were kept out of the reach of the hackers.
The Indian power system, for planning and operational purposes, is divided into five regional grids, namely, Northern, Eastern, Western, North Eastern and Southern grids.
An example of how the repercussions of a cyber-hijack of the power grids would look like was seen on 30 and 31 July 2012, when a blackout engulfed the entire Northern region covering eight states—delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan,
Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir as well as the Union Territory of Chandigarh. Power could be restored only on the night of 31 July after a loss of approximately $100 million. The reason for the blackout, as per the inquiry done by Central Electricity Regulatory Commission, was “skewed load generation balance among the regions”.
In May 2019, the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission
had constituted an expert committee to suggest a revamp of the decadesold guidelines related to the electricity grid. In its report submitted in January 2020, experts talked about the seriousness of cyber attacks on power grids by devoting an entire chapter to cyber security, which called for grid operators to install firewalls and other measures to avert a cyber attack, while also calling for developing a Cyber Crisis Management Plan which will include continuity plans, recovery plans, communication plans, cyber incident response plan, disaster recovery plan and priority resource and manpower allocation plan.
However, nothing has moved beyond the files as both operators and policymakers are yet to take the problem as seriously as they should.
“We only move when we are hit. We react, we do not like pre-empting. Not just electricity transmission, pipeline networks of oil companies, doors of many dams, apart from metro, airport, railways are targets of these hackers and once they get into the system, it will be massive chaos and catastrophe all around. We need to wake up to this now,” said an intelligence agency official.
According to him, China’s