Sunday, October 28, 2012

Challenges Of Power Grids Cyber Security In India

Cyber security issues in India are in limelight these days. Cyber security players across the country are struggling to deal with cyber security problems of India. In fact many good and far reaching cyber security initiatives in India have already been launched by private techno legal players like Perry4Law’s Techno Legal Base (PTLB).

For instance the exclusive techno legal cyber security research centre in India and national cyber security database of India (NCSDI) are managed by PTLB. These cyber security initiatives intend to strengthen the cyber security capabilities of India.

According to Praveen Dalal, managing partner of Perry4Law and CEO of PTLB, Sophisticated Malware like Stuxnet, Duqu, Flame, etc have already proved that Critical Infrastructures around the World like Power Grids, Nuclear Facilities, Satellites, Defense Networks, Governmental Informatics Infrastructures, etc are vulnerable to diverse range of Cyber Attacks. The truth is that Cyber Attacks are affecting Indian Critical Infrastructure and we are not even aware of the same.

It is clear that power sector of India is also not safe from cyber attacks and power grids cyber security in India must be strengthened. The cyber security challenges for the smart grids in India must be properly understood and adequately tackled. A special care of cyber security of automated power grids of India must be taken.

Further, cyber security problems, issues and challenges management in India must be part and parcel of national cyber security policy of India. At the same time critical infrastructure protection in India must also be ensured. Critical infrastructure includes power grids, satellites, defence installations, atomic plants, etc. Most of these critical infrastructures are managed by supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems.

SCADA may be the new cyber attack priority for cyber criminals and rouge nations. We must ensure sufficient cyber protection of SCADA systems in India in general and critical infrastructure in particular.

The sooner these issues are redressed by Indian government the better it would be for the cyber security of power grids of India.