Energy & Utilities

Inventory control centers, substations, plant networks, engineering workstations, remote-access services, and the business applications that support operations. Include renewable generation, distributed energy resources, and supplier-managed connections where relevant. Record ownership, criticality, connectivity, and approved maintenance methods.

Librarian can help organize this information, but engineering teams must validate the operational picture. Begin integrations through Relay with limited permissions and approved data flows. Treat unsupported equipment and hard-to-patch systems as managed exceptions with compensating safeguards, not invisible assets outside the security program.

• Identify dependencies on shared identity, telecommunications, and external control services.
• Separate business administration from operational and recovery administration.

Supplier support and field maintenance can create persistent pathways into sensitive environments. Require individual accounts, strong authentication where supported, time-limited access, and reviewable activity records. Confirm who can authorize emergency maintenance and how access is removed afterward.

Protect backups, configuration repositories, and recovery credentials from the same compromise that affects production. Argus can inform credential-exposure reviews, and Pulse can help prioritize relevant advisories. Neither an external alert nor a detection should trigger an unreviewed operational change. Security and operations owners must approve consequential containment actions together.

• Test whether recovery copies remain accessible when enterprise identity is unavailable.
• Review forgotten vendor tunnels and standing remote-support accounts.

Prepare for both immediate disruption and quieter compromise of engineering or administrative systems. Recovery procedures should explain how to establish a trusted state, validate configuration integrity, and coordinate restoration with operators. Include customer communications and dependencies on fuel, scheduling, and market services where applicable.

Use Dewey for response coordination support and Growler for evidence workflows. Judge can help organize evidence against applicable requirements, but obligations differ across entities and jurisdictions; not every energy organization has the same regulatory scope. Human leadership retains responsibility for operational decisions, reporting, and public statements.

• Run an exercise involving a critical supplier outage and a compromised administrator.
• Assign owners and completion dates to recovery gaps discovered during testing.