NYPA enhances cybersecurity of New York energy value chain
The New York Power Authority (NYPA) has expanded its partnership with cybersecurity firm IronNet to address the growing cyber risks across the entire energy value chain as digitalisation increases the vulnerability of grid networks to attacks.
NYPA will leverage IronNet’s machine learning, artificial intelligence and cloud-based collective defence capabilities to improve the cybersecurity of the New York grid and of its supply chain partners.
A unified cyber defence mechanism will help enhance resilience against the rapidly changing and modern attack mechanism, according to a statement.
IronNet’s cybersecurity framework is hosted by Amazon Web Services and will provide municipal utilities, partners, state agencies and other energy stakeholders with great visibility on events occurring within the entire power grid for pro-active security capabilities.
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The system will leverage network detection and response and behavioural analytics to detect anomalies within the grid in real-time.
In the event of anomalies, provides alerts for utilities to trigger defence against attacks before damage.
Bill Welch, Co-CEO of IronNet said: “In the same way that utilities band together to provide mutual aid after damaging weather events, NYPA is making collaborative responses to cyber-attacks possible.
“We are proud to work with NYPA to enable all public utility stakeholders to adopt a proactive defence against any cyber adversary with an eye on the grid—from criminal groups to nation-states.”
The partnership follows a successful pilot of the NYPA Collective Defense community which included five NYPA municipalities joining hands-on cybersecurity enhancement.
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Victor Costanza, deputy chief information security officer at NYPA added: “Given the rise of sophisticated cyberattacks, we need to help our municipal utilities implement a strong security program that can detect and mitigate attacks in real-time.
Costanza added that a collaborative approach to cyber threats helps to raise the security posture across the state’s entire IT and power infrastructure and bridge gaps between the public and private sectors to enhance the protection of critical infrastructure.
