Network Perception Featured in Forbes Article

Sustainability and Cybersecurity: The Unexpected Dynamic Duo of the Energy Transition

Sustainability and cybersecurity are rarely mentioned in the same sentence. Sustainability is tangible: on a given day you might see electric vehicles zooming down the street, wind farms dotting the countryside and rain gardens collecting and conserving water. By contrast, nearly all cybersecurity solutions fall into the background of our daily lives. We turn the lights on, browse the internet, make phone calls and use smart thermostats without seeing the vast infrastructure underpinning our technology.

And yet, the infrastructure needed to enable our sustainable future requires far greater levels of cybersecurity than previously managed. Introducing new technology to power and manage the grid has prompted new cybersecurity challenges for energy companies, from utilities to electric vehicle operators. As we continue to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, we risk becoming more vulnerable if we don’t start associating climate resiliency with cyber resiliency.

The Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack last year and the recent North Korean state-sponsored espionage on U.S. energy providers are just two examples of how disruptive the consequences of cyber-attacks can be to the energy systems we rely on. This means companies driving the energy transition – utilities, power producers, renewable energy companies, suppliers and service providers – have an additional responsibility to prepare for (and mitigate) cybersecurity risks.

Against this backdrop, the energy industry’s rapid transformation has surfaced five unique cybersecurity challenges that I believe SaaS startups are best-equipped to tackle:

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Challenge #4:

Given the critical nature of energy access and stability, companies driving the energy transition will be subject to increasing regulatory pressures. Cybersecurity compliance and awareness are becoming board-level conversations for energy companies, and assessing and ranking critical assets to meet regulatory standards will be top of mind for CISOs, CTOs and CIOs. Energy companies will need tools to remove siloed standards of operation and provide the transparency needed to meet regulations and avoid the social and environmental damage caused by compromised security infrastructure.

Solution: Platform streamlining regulatory compliance for critical infrastructure.

• Location: Chicago, IL
• Founded: 2014
• Value proposition: Network Perception’s platform can help electric utilities save time and resources when assessing and managing their compliance with the complex network access requirements and audit processes.