Quietly and without much public recognition, the National Guard has been developing a sophisticated capability for cyberdefense.
The ability to reliably generate and deliver electric power is foundational to modern civilization. Unfortunately, most of us take it for granted. It is hard to imagine a more important function on which every individual, and the whole nation, depends. Those charged with the responsibility of protecting our critical infrastructures face great challenges. Just think about the high distribution of the electric power grid! It has nearly 5,000 different entities of widely varying size and capacity generating and/or distributing energy.
Historically, the greatest threats to the reliable generation and delivery of energy were environmental such as major storms and natural disasters, but this is changing. Some portions of the grid are particularly vulnerable to physical attack. More significantly, the grid is the subject of increasing cyber penetrations and outright attacks. Last December, a relatively simple cyberattack on a portion of the Ukrainian power grid disrupted power to hundreds of thousands of customers.
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