The Department of Energy's Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) has earmarked $12 million in cooperative agreements to support the development and deployment of cybersecurity technologies for distribution and municipal utility companies.
CESER will team up with the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA) and the American Public Power Association to build technologies that will track adversarial activities through community-led information sharing efforts, DOE said Friday.
The partnership also aims to employ artificial intelligence and advanced analytics to mitigate false positives in threat detection and determine how and when a system was compromised.
CESER seeks to field one technology from the program to utility companies by 2023. NRECA represents over 900 public power districts, electric cooperatives and public utility districts while APPA supports community-owned utilities that serve nearly 50M customers.