Multiple steps taken to check cyber threats faced by power grid: Govt

The government on Tuesday said multiple steps have been taken to enhance security and check cyber threats faced by national power grid.

Minister of State for Power, New and Renewable Energy R K Singh told the Rajya Sabha that national power grid comprises a large number of assets established across the country and interconnectedness is a key feature of networked world and cyber opportunity and threat are part of it.

"For curbing the cyber threats over national power grid, multiple steps have been taken. For securing transmission assets of power grid, communication from equipment of substations to control centres are done over dedicated optical fibre network owned by POWERGRID without any connectivity to external networks," he said.

Singh was replying to a question on whether a large number of assets of national power grid could be vulnerable to cyber attacks and what steps the government has taken to increase security across power grid in country.

The minister said these assets are further protected through multiple firewalls and systems, he said, are kept isolated from office networks to prevent any malicious online attack because of internet activity.

Also, the Ministry of Power has formed sectoral CERT-transmission housed in Powergrid which works in close coordination with Indian computer emergency response team (CERT-In), National Critical Information Infrastructure Protection Centre (NCIIP), Ministry of Home Affairs and Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), procedures for protected systems, alerts and advisories, regular cyber audit, crisis management plan, mock drills and exercises, the minister said.