The Senate passed a measure to establish a two-year pilot program to investigate the possibilities of analog systems to be integrated into the U.S. power grid in order to prevent cyber vulnerabilities. Introduced in 2017 and approved by the Energy and Natural Resources Committee, a mirror version of the “retro approach” bill was introduced to the House but has not yet emerged from committee. “You normally think of technology advancement constantly pushing the envelope and innovating. But to use an analog approach to this to ensure speed to recovery is a different way of doing it, which I don’t think folks have really though of that much,” stated the senior fellow at the GW University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security. The origins of the bill come from the 2015 cyberattack against the Ukrainian energy grid in which responders succeeded in restoring power “relatively quickly using human-powered backups.”
Source: Plan to Dumb-Down the Power Grid In Name of Cybersecurity Passes Senate – Nextgov
