Cyber threats demand increased investment to secure global power grids, experts say
RIYADH: As global momentum builds toward cleaner and smarter energy systems, cyberattacks on power grids and transmission lines are emerging as a growing challenge to resilience.
Speaking to Arab News on the sidelines of the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Riyadh, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that investment in energy infrastructure was critical to protect against cyberattacks, which were becoming a major threat to energy systems worldwide.
“I think that the under-investment in the energy grid and energy related infrastructure is obviously a critical priority,” she said. “Finding the money to do that, and the will to do that, is a challenge, and it falls on both public and private hands. So it’s really whose responsibility is it to pay for it, who prioritizes, but at the end of the day, if we don’t have a resilient energy infrastructure, then we have potentially massive, catastrophic shocks to businesses and to the economy at large.”
A recent Boston Consulting Group report said that quantum computing could unlock more than $50 billion in value across industries, with energy representing the largest opportunity. In oil and gas alone, the potential savings range from $6 billion to $30 billion.
