US energy sector facing cyber risk from Chinese-made grid tech

Alarms have been raised regarding the unknown prevalence of Chinese equipment in the U.S. electric grid, which presents a national security risk to the U.S., CyberScoop reports. The U.S. should urgently move to identify electric grid equipment of Chinese origin, said Sen. Angus Maine, I-Maine, during a Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee hearing. Meanwhile, Department of Energy Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response Director Puesh Kumar noted that the Energy Department has already been moving to better understand the most critical grid system components, while determining those that have been manufactured in China. The Energy Department has also collaborated with national labs to identify vulnerabilities in different grid equipment but more extensive information sharing efforts are needed to crack down on Chinese equipment, Kumar said. "We are all seeing our own cyberthreats in our own spaces, but we're not connecting the dots. We're not seeing: if this is happening out west, is it also happening out east? How do we connect those dots with what we learned from private sector networks and cyber technology companies with the intelligence community?" Kumar added.