Siemens and NATO CCDCOE advance cooperation on cybersecurity for critical infrastructure

The way grids are operated and managed has changed fundamentally in the last years with the integration of more renewable and decentralized energy sources. The need for network optimization, interaction between prosumers, and the number of new market participants have all significantly increased. With information and communication technology penetrating transmission and distribution networks, the growing interconnections create more vectors for potential attacks on digital energy grids. Consequently, cybersecurity is a top priority for power system operators and government bodies.

Since 2010, Locked Shields is an annual cyber defence exercise organized by NATO CCDCOE to train cyber response teams to defend against massive cyberattacks. Siemens has teamed-up with NATO CCDCOE since 2017 to include power grid scenarios into the defense exercise, which includes systems and products such as the Siemens Spectrum Power and Sicam A8000 remote terminal units. These help to meet complex energy grid scenarios with control centers and substations which are interconnected and interdependent. In the exercise, the defenders have to set the defense lines of a complex infrastructure including various systems and applications that should withstand massive cyber-attacks executed by a large group of hackers. Keeping the lights on while performing threat hunting, reporting attacks and recovering the system are some of the challenging tasks the cybersecurity experts learn to deal with in this exercise. Locked Shields is an opportunity to learn through exercise, training and cooperation within the field of defense cyber operations.