Energy Department set to release its first-ever cyber strategy

The top Energy Department official for cybersecurity on Tuesday said the agency is for the first time planning to release a strategic plan to lay out how the department intends to better protect the energy grid.

Alex Fitzsimmons, the acting under secretary of energy at the U.S. Department of Energy and director of its Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER), said the plan is meant to supplement the recently-published national cyber strategy and will focus on how the agency will strengthen the “security and resilience” of the energy sector.

The importance of partnerships with the private sector and how to bolster them will be at the heart of the strategic plan, Fitzsimmons said.

“Private sector [companies] are largely responsible for defending their networks — we have to do that partnership,” Fitzsimmons said at the McCrary Cyber Summit in Washington, D.C. “We have to be able to get timely and actionable information out to them so that they can secure their networks.”

Fitzsimmons said the plan also will focus on how to best invest in artificial intelligence to defend against adversaries deploying AI-enabled offensive cyber weapons.

“We have to be able to invest in AI for cyber defense — that information and those technologies are then used to secure and harden critical energy infrastructure, especially defense critical energy infrastructure that might be involved in future conflicts,” Fitzsimmons said. 

“All of that hardening and that information technology helps us prepare and respond to cyber and physical incidents, the lessons learned from which help us provide timely and actionable information to the energy sector — that is the CESER strategic plan in a nutshell.”

Asked by reporters in the hallway after his panel when the strategic plan will be released, Fitzsimmons would only say “soon.”