Energy infrastructure has increasingly come under assault, and analysts said the attack that cut off fuel supplies this week should be a “wake-up call.” WASHINGTON - The audacious ransomware attack that shut down a major fuel pipeline and sent Americans scrambling for gasoline in the Southeast this week was not the first time hackers have disrupted America’s aging, vulnerable energy infrastructure. And it’s unlikely to be the last. Across the globe, cyberattackers are increasingly taking aim at the energy systems that underpin modern society. A February report from IBM found that the energy industry was the third most targeted sector for such attacks in 2020, behind only finance and manufacturing. That was up from ninth place in 2019. “This should be a wake-up call,” said Jonathon Monken, a principal at the energy consulting firm Converge Strategies. “When you look at what’s most likely to cause disruptions to energy companies today, I think you have to put cybersecurity risks at the top.” Despite years of warnings, America’s vast network of pipelines, electric grids and power plants remains acutely vulnerable to cyberattacks with the potential to disrupt energy supplies for millions of people. Dealing with those risks, analysts said, will pose a major challenge for the Biden administration as it seeks hundreds of billions of dollars to modernize the nation’s energy infrastructure and transition to cleaner sources of energy to address climate change. Regulators are increasingly poised to step in. On Monday, Richard Glick, the chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said it was time to establish mandatory cybersecurity standards for the nation’s nearly 3 million miles of oil and gas pipelines, similar to those currently found in the electricity sector. “Simply encouraging pipelines to voluntarily adopt best practices is an inadequate response to the ever-increasing number and sophistication of malevolent cyber... |