Power grid is vulnerable to cyber and physical attack

The National Research Council recently issued a 168-page report -- "Terrorism and the Electric Power Delivery System." It found the system to be highly vulnerable for two reasons.

• Number one: The system is physically vulnerable, particularly the system's large high voltage transformers. Granger Morgan is one of the authors of the report. He says many of these transformers are at facilities in wide open spaces. "So a small number of people who knew what they were doing could do very large and very disruptive damage to the system." Repairing broken transformers could leave large numbers of people without power for weeks or even months.
• The second vulnerability is to cyber attacks. "All the hype is about cyber attack," says Morgan. "But physical attacks can take the system down for weeks or months and it's almost impossible to see how you do that with cyber attack."