A Cyber Attack on the power grid of London could not only leave more than 1.5 million people in dark but could also cost the city a loss of £111 million per day says a new study made by ITRC of the University of Oxford.
According to a study conducted by the UK Infrastructure Transitions Research Consortium i.e ITRC it was revealed that the power grids operating across the United Kingdom were increasingly susceptible to Cyber Attacks.
Some years back, many thought that these sensitive infrastructures were impermeable. But now, as hackers are becoming increasingly sophisticated and are backed by some state governments, the smart electricity networks are becoming super-susceptible to malicious cyber attacks.
For instance, an outage caused at a power grid in New York substation affected more than 62,000 people causing insignificant loss- both economically and politically as this outage created an uproar in the Senate on how the government digital assets were secure from state-funded cyber attacks.
Russia’s infiltration into Ukraine’s electricity distribution network in 2015 affecting more than 225,000 people stands as a tall example of power grids becoming increasingly vulnerable to cyber-attacks.
As per a report compiled and released by US Intelligence Community last year, countries like Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are known to launch cyber operations on the west to steal info, influence the populace and to disrupt utility services by targeting critical infrastructure.
Power grids when targeted by cyber warfare show a direct impact on households and businesses. And the risk grows immensely if the critical infrastructure is partially or fully automated.
Risk Analysis Journal supports the above-said statement by stating that cyber events causing power disruption could yield losses ranging from £20.6 M for a 4-substation electricity event to £111.4 million for a 14-substation electricity event. These attacks cascade operations failure across telecoms, freshwater supply, wastewater treatment and railways and airports to a certain extent.
Deeply concerning….isn’t it?
