NEPRA Chairman Tauseef H. Farooqi has stressed the need to develop a comprehensive cyber security governance model to ensure security in the power sector.

Addressing a session on “Cyber Security Challenge in Critical Infrastructure (Power Sector)” at the NEPRA Tower Expressing, he expressed concerns over the continuous occurrence of cyber security incidents in the national energy sector.

The session aimed at raising awareness amongst the public and private sectors’ energy power entities against the global risks of cyber-attacks. 

Highlighting the importance of the session, Tauseef said: “Cyberspace is the 21st century’s new warzone. Most of the cyber-attacks in 2021 and 2022 focused on the energy sector. Cyber security is more challenging within the power sector due to dispersed geo-locations of generation plants and interdependence between OT and IT infrastructure.”

He said that cyber security incidents are now “Eco-System challenges” because it is not just one electricity supply chain actor that is targeted, but the weakest link somewhere in the country’s power system.”

In his remarks, Chief Technology Officer Tariq Malik emphasized that the recent cyber-attacks by means of viruses or other known methods against primary energy operators were “once again reminding us that we are now facing a very expensive ‘digital pandemic which has become an ‘endemic’ in security monitoring.”

He said in many events cyber incidents were continuously emerging at the global level on several OT Systems in different industrial technological plants with a fluctuation of increases and temporary apparent decreases in the number of cases identified.

Tariq said that industries have to learn to live with it, putting in place and continuously updating the necessary treatments to thwart and "mitigate their effects."

The session was attended by a large number of power sector professionals, trade and business representatives and NEPRA members of the authority and professionals.

Credit : Independent News Pakistan-WealthPk