EMP Strikes

As a member of the power sector, DTL Power is absolutely vital to the operations of other critical infrastructure pieces. The other key pieces of critical infrastructure represented in our environment are the Federal Government, Avistel Telecom, Mistral Bank, and Hytema Defense. Electrical power is the core of the US critical infrastructure, and without the energy supplied by the power sector, none of these other infrastructure pieces will be able to continue operations after local backup energy stores are depleted. It is for this reason that DTL Power?s primary security objective is power system uptime.

In Jon Kyl’s article “Unready for This Attack”, he argues that the United States has the means necessary to protect itself from an EMP attack, but is staying vulnerable. One of Kyl’s main points is that the U.S. has become a technological powerhouse and would be, in many ways, helpless without electricity. He also states that equipment mainly effected by an EMP are produced in countries overseas, making them hard to replace in the event of an attack. Another article that raises some great points is Brian Kennedy’s article “ The (Terrorist) Wolf Is at the Door.”

One of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) most important missions is protecting critical infrastructure. Assessing CI vulnerabilities is critical to strengthening their capabilities and ensuring resiliency. Since most of them are privately owned, the Department partners with the private sector in conducting voluntary, non-regulatory vulnerability assessments (“Critical Infrastructure”, 2015). According to Homeland Security (2015), vulnerability assessments are the foundation National Infrastructure Protection Plan (NIPP) which outlines how the government and the private sector work together to manage risks to achieve security and resiliency goals (“Critical Infrastructure”, 2015). Protecting America’s electrical power grid is especially complicated because all of the other CIs depend on the energy sector’s

Accordingly, this document has been developed to provide information regarding DTL Power and the measures that have been developed and implemented to safeguard its information and information systems from a cyber threat. This document is broken down into several sections that will provide an analysis of DTL Power and the energy sector; as well as the effectiveness of cybersecurity technology/policies in the energy sector, the team’s cyber strategy, and budget.

On March 31, 2016, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) started a nationwide campaign to warn against the dangers faced by the U.S. utilities against the cyberattacks. According to DHS, there were an estimated 331 hacks or physical attacks against the U.S. power grid from 2011 to 2014. As of February 2016, they are occurring at a rate of once every 4 days. “A major cyberattack on the U.S. electric grid could cause over $1 trillion in economic damage, estimates ThreatTrackSecurity.com.” (MacDonald, 2016, pg. 2).

The species of bacteria used to make yogurt both have a β-galactosidase system which hydrolyzes lactose into glucose and galactose. Because lactose is a disaccharide, it can be transported into the cell via the permease system. As aforementioned, glucose then enters the EMP pathway to yield pyruvate.

On Wednesday, March 28, 1979, around 4 a.m., there was a failure in the water pumps at the Three Mile Island in Middletown, Pennsylvania. This led to a partial meltdown of a nuclear power plant. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Health, Education and Welfare (now Health and Human Services), the Department of Energy, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania all conducted particular studies of the radiological consequences of the accident. Approximately two million people were estimated to have received an average of one millirem of radiation, and there was a maximum dose to a person who was at the site of 100 millirem (“Backgrounder”). To put this into perspective, an exposure from a single chest X-ray is two to six millirem (“Doses”). However, this put fear into the minds of politicians and others all across the country. What the people do not know, though, is nuclear is better. Instead of using fossil-fuels and wind power, America ought to switch to nuclear energy to power the country because it is safer, cleaner, less expensive, and more reliable than the current ways of producing energy

In any kind of a long term, power grid down scenario, you can be guaranteed that survival for you and your family will become the only thing on your mind. It’s also going to be the only thing on the mind for every other person as well, meaning that you’ll find yourself stuck in a torn apart and dangerous world where the rule of law has been effectively thrown out and everybody is competing with one another to survive.

Our society today is ever more dependent upon electricity in all aspects of life. Keeping the power infrastructure throughout the United States secure and functioning properly should be considered a high priority for both private sector and government. Lacking properly functioning power caused by an outage has widespread impact not just on common conveniences being unavailable but also on critical areas such as emergency services, transportation, water distribution, communication and food production and storage.

The 2003 northeast blackout that saw about 50 million people from the northeast US and southeast Canada lose power for about 2 days at the cost of $6 billion dollars according to JR Minkel (Minkle) and was the biggest blackout in North American history (Minkle). The disaster lead to a report that showed the blackout was caused by a combination of human error and equipment failure. To prevent issues like this in the future a “smart grid” needs to be developed that would monitor and repair itself in the event of problems. Essentially computers and applications would be the first responder when there is an equipment failure on the grid. The problem with this solution is that by placing more of the control of the power grid into the hands of computers and applications, it opens up the grid to cyber-attacks. The economic impact of a total or even partial failure of the power grid is astronomical and makes a very appealing target to those who wish to cause

In the year 2030 a missile soared over the eastern region of America and unleashed a powerful EMP that fried the electrical circuits and left the people there in sheer black. An act of terrorism, no doubt. During this momentary loss of power, other countries took advantage to bring down one of the largest

The Presidential Policy Directive (PPD) on Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience advances a national unity of effort to strengthen and maintain secure, functioning, and resilient critical infrastructure (The White House Office of the Press Secretary, February 2013). It is imperative for every nation to develop a critical infrastructure protection plan that will provide the essential services to its society. To archive this, a government must be proactive and coordinate its efforts that will reinforce and maintain secure, functioning, and

Nearly every community has some sort of community risk, threat, and assessment plan that takes into account one of the six potential risks that are of concern to homeland security. Though each of these plans will likely differ from one another, many communities will have the same types of information in their plans. This essay will look at the Threat and Hazard Identification and Risk Assessment Guide (THIRA), the Community Risk Reduction Planning Guide, as well as FEMA’s National Preparedness plan. Any combination of these guides are a good starting point for every community in America. At top of every communities list as well as the nation is the protection of the critical infrastructure. Loss of infrastructure regardless of how big or small the community is could have very crippling effects on that community.

The vulnerabilities when it comes to natural disasters, can be caused from severe weather like storms, droughts, and extreme hot weather. Can also be caused by severe fires. There are areas that have tree limbs overhanging power lines which can cause the powerlines to come down if there is a severe storm that would end up causing these trees to fall on the lines. With inadequate tree trimming this could cause a problem with any kind of weather, with not cutting back tress it makes powerlines more vulnerable with high winds and snow fall from these storms. With these power outages, due to a storm because the trees have not been cut back can cause a blackout and make it vulnerable for a terrorist attack. There is a debate over how serious it can be for terrorists to pose a threat on the U.S. when there is a power outage. Some of the technical failures can come from large accidental outages caused by cascading failures in one of the high voltage transmission systems. The main thing that is focused on with power problems is the transmission and distribution system, substations, and the other associated parts. Human error can also be a problem when it comes to power outages, not doing security checks or system analysis check and finding problems with these systems can also cause power outages. We need electricity so our power system is a potential target for terrorist, even though our electric systems are only one of the targets that terrorist may think of striking but is not

The damage of a full-fledged cyber attack would be devastating, the destruction would be unparalleled to any other tragedy that has occurred America. Since technology is responsible for providing America with vital entities and resources, an unadulterated cyber attack would nearly fail the American economy; this is what is known as critical systems failure. Weapons of mass destruction and cyber attacks present imminent threats of critical systems failure. Although currently Americas’ critical infrastructures are coordinated by controlled systems, majority of these systems are indeed connected to the American cyberspace. This exposes one of America’s most vulnerable spot amidst cyber security. Another major vulnerable spot within the nations IT security would be the geographical physical location for each of Americas primary infrastructures, as well as their productivity. Due to the proximal locations, the major infrastructures could very well be infiltrated by one efficient CNA.