From: Washington Post/Federal Eye
By Josh Hicks
A House Democrat this week released a report that could help resurrect bipartisan legislation he sponsored three years ago to protect the nation’s power grid from cyber attacks and other threats.
The analysis, spearheaded by Rep. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and released Tuesday, says a lack of compliance with voluntary security standards has made the electric grid ”highly vulnerable to attacks from Iran and North Korea” and additional dangers such as geomagnetic storms from solar activity.
In 2010, Markey introduced the GRID Act, which would have given the federal government greater authority to impose standards on electric utilities. That proposal, cosponsored by Rep. Mike Upton (R-Mich.), passed the House but never made its way out of committee in the Senate.
Markey is renewing his efforts to enact grid-security legislation. His report — which surveyed more than 150 utilities, cooperatives and federal entities owning major pieces of the electric system — showed that the power network is the target of daily cyber attacks, with one utility saying it faced 10,000 attempted attacks each month.
Two regulatory bodies currently set grid-security guidelines. The industry-run North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) proposes standards and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) gives them final approval.
Consensus is required between the two groups to mandate protections, and proposed standards that do not receive support from both NERC and FERC can become voluntary.
Critics say the process of reaching consensus can take years, lagging far behind the pace at which new threats develop. They also contend that it leads to the lowest common denominator of what the electricity industry is willing to accept.
The GRID Act would have allowed FERC to act alone in requiring safeguards for the nation’s electric system when threats are serious or imminent. Markey’s office this week said the congressman still stands behind that measure.
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