US power grid is vulnerable to attack: Fmr. NRG CEO
Hackers linked to North Korea have targeted American power companies using phishing emails, NBC News reported, citing a private report by cybersecurity company FireEye.
Former NRG CEO David Crane on Wednesday said the U.S. power grid could be vulnerable to attack.
“The grid system in the United States is one of the great engineering achievements of the time, but it’s vulnerable. It’s vulnerable to both cyber-attack and physical attack as we’ve seen in the past,” he told FOX Business’ Liz Claman on “Countdown to the Closing Bell.”
Crane discussed how devastating an attack against even a part of the power grid would be to the United States.
“Most people in the industry would say the U.S. system is three parts - East of the Mississippi, West of the Mississippi and Texas. So those are very big footprints and you can see if you can disable part of it, you would disable a wide swath of America,” he said.
Crane believes that it is just a matter of time before a foreign country successfully hits the power grid.
“I think it is just a matter of time,” he said. “I think the big implication for businesses, just like after 9/11 it became imprudent for any [company] to have all their servers in one location. I think right now businesses have to realize they need a certain amount of grid resilience at all their important places of business and that’s probably somewhere on their roof, storage, behind the building.”