Security challenges for the electricity infrastructure

Because critical infrastructures touch us all, the growing potential for infrastructure problems stems from multiple sources, including system complexity, economic growth, deregulation, terrorism, and even the weather. Electric power systems constitute the fundamental infrastructure of modern society. A successful terrorist attempt to disrupt electricity supplies could have devastating effects on national security, the economy, and every citizen's life. Yet power systems have widely dispersed assets that can never be absolutely defended against a determined attack. Indeed, because of the intimate connections between power systems and society's other infrastructures, we need to consider three different kinds of threats: attacks upon the power system; attacks by the power system; and attacks through the power system.