The Pentagon's plan to defend the power grid against hackers

The Pentagon's advanced research wing is looking for ways to safeguard America's most critical assets from attacks on the Internet – a network it helped create. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which pioneered much of the technology underpinning the Internet, is planning to invest $77 million over the next four years to develop methods to help utilities detect and recover from cyberattacks, which experts say is a growing threat to small and large power operators alike. "What we’re really looking at is a high-impact, low probability event," says John Everett, program manager at the Information and Innovation Office at DARPA who is overseeing the initiative. But, says Dr. Everett, "DARPA’s mission is to create and prevent technological surprises."

As electric power plants and other critical infrastructure facilities' increasingly rely on Internet-connected technologies and wireless communications, hackers appear to be uncovering new avenues to penetrate their networks. While cybersecurity experts have been warning about this for years, that threat gained new attention in the wake of Dec's malware attack on a Ukrainian power plant and recent news reports of digital incursions at a small New York dam and at the major US power producer Calpine Corp. In addition to those attacks, President Barack Obama issued a presidential proclamation in October that emphasized the need to shore up US critical infrastructure facilities against attack.