Courtesy of Utility “Smart” Meters and Grid: 48% of Power and Utility CEOs Think Cybersecurity Attacks Are Inevitable. More Tax Dollars Wasted to Try to Fix.

By B.N. Frank

From their mouths to your ears, a recent article from Utility Dive confirms what opponents have been saying ALL ALONG – the implementation of the “Smart Grid” along with the installation of millions of utility “Smart” Meters and related infrastructure have created a recipe for cybersecurity disaster. Not only that – more tax dollars are being wasted to try to fix what many experts have always considered to be unfixable in re cybersecurity risk and “Smart” utility technology:

From the article:

The broader KPMG report focuses on CEOs across a number of industries, and finds it isn’t just power and utilities executives who worry about the balance between technological innovation and susceptibility to cyberattacks. The top concern for CEOs in general are economic nationalism, followed by cybersecurity, “disruptive technology risk” and climate change risk.

For utility executives, cybersecurity continues to be a top concern as grid modernization potentially opens up the power sector to more vulnerabilities.

“In theory, a grid with more distributed resources can increase the potential attack surface for adversaries because the capacity of distributed generation, including renewables, has grown exponentially over the last decade,” Bill Lawrence, director of the North American Electric Reliability Corporation’s Electricity Information Sharing and Analysis Center, told Utility Dive in May.

Connecticut officials in September found there had been millions of attempts to hack utilities in the state over the past year, though all intrusions were successfully prevented. In October, seven Russian military officials were indicted for hacking-related charges, including allegedly trying to steal login credentials from Westinghouse Electric employees involved with advanced nuclear reactor development.

Back in July, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials said that Russian hackers had been breaching utility control rooms since 2016 and that the attacks were ongoing, raising new concerns that hacking efforts were becoming more sophisticated.

[…]

However, federal officials have still been active in planning for a potential large scale attack. The Trump administration has argued in part that its proposed coal and nuclear bailout is an attempt to maintain a more resilient grid in light of cybersecurity concerns, a point other federal officials and utility executives have disputed.

The Department of Energy last month awarded $28 million toward 11 cybersecurity projects and is coordinating efforts with the DHS to make pipelines more secure.

$28 MILLION!!!!

Besides dangerous cybersecurity issues, The “Smart” Grid and Utility “Smart” Meters have also created many other widespread and sometimes dangerous problems that didn’t exist with original analog meters: fires, explosions, measurement errors/inflated bills, privacy violations, frequent replacements, health and environmental risks. Documentary film, Take Back Your Power covers them all.

Activist Post and many others have reported about this many times over the years. There are citizens, doctors, elected officials, consumer, environmental, and health organizations throughout the U.S. and around the world who have been trying to prevent utility “Smart” Meters from being installed throughout their communities and on their homes.

These widespread and sometimes dangerous problems did not exist with original analog meters. Billions of dollars have already been spent and so much was risked to replace millions of analog meters that weren’t broken with horrible “Smart” Meters that never worked right in the first place. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that the easiest and least expensive way to resolve this is to replace all “Smart” Meters with original analog meters and be done with them already.