New Critical Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator Program Focuses on Advancing Government Technologies That Address Critical Technical Cybersecurity Gaps
The transition from concept to adoption can be a difficult hurdle for emerging technologies to overcome. Commercialization costs, access to testing facilities, and scalability are all challenges that can block or hinder a technology’s journey to market, leading to a gap between concept and adoption.
The Critical Energy Cybersecurity Accelerator™ (CECA™) has launched a new avenue to help technologies from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) 17 national laboratories fill this gap. Currently completing its pilot phase, the program focuses on improving Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) of cutting-edge cybersecurity technologies within DOE’s portfolio that address critical technical gaps in today’s market.
“Cutting-edge cybersecurity research and technologies are being developed in national laboratories, but they are not always designed in a way that they can be easily used by industry,” said Nik Urlaub, principal investigator of the CECA. “This new track aims to help these emerging cybersecurity technologies within the National Laboratory Complex have a greater impact.”
The new pre-commercialization pathway is designed to complement CECA’s existing commercialization pathway, which evaluates commercial technologies providing solutions to high-priority risks and challenges identified by utilities. Technologies in the new stream are subject to iterative laboratory testing in realistic energy environments, commercialization support, and resources for industry engagement. They are also compared, before and after evaluation, to DOE standards. Technology Readiness Assessment Guide And Adoption Readiness Assessment.
Chart by NREL
“When we look at TRLs for domestic lab technologies, we see significant government funding for Tiers 1-3, which is early proof-of-concept work,” Urlaub said. “Funding for these technologies often slows down when they reach Tiers 4-6, when they experience a lack of market readiness. »
In the pilot phase of the pre-commercialization process, CECA evaluated the Cybersecurity Situational Awareness Tool (CYSAT), an advanced threat detection tool for real-time awareness of cyber and physical assets. The CECA research team exposed the tool to new environments, new technologies, new data and new attack scenarios using the Advanced Research on Cyber Range of Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES)a research environment that provides accurate, verifiable testing and allows users to replicate large-scale energy assets, connections and communications networks. Through testing, the CYSAT development and CECA research teams expanded the tool’s application, added features, improved its scalability and increased its capabilities to achieve TRL 4. Support for commercialization through of the program helps the CYSAT development team identify steps towards higher TRLs.
“CYSAT leverages artificial intelligence methods and data-driven approaches to analyze data streams and detect anomalies, thereby providing situational awareness to power system operators at all scales,” said Vivek Kumar Singh , principal investigator of CYSAT. “Many utilities and industrial suppliers have expressed interest in conducting pilot testing and field demonstrations, and we are developing future plans with more case studies. »
Technologies from the pre-market and commercialization tracks are evaluated for their performance against simulated attacks based on real threats in the ARIES Cyber portfolio.
As the new pre-commercial track expands from pilot to operation, future cycles will explore new technologies and test scenarios and increase environmental fidelity to meet the needs of future energy systems. These could include scenarios testing the technologies’ interactions with numerous network-edge devices, highly distributed energy resources, and electric vehicle fleets.
CECA was established in 2021 by DOE’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and has completed two cohorts in its commercialization journey. Cohort 1 evaluated market-ready technologies from Blue Ridge Networks, Sierra Nevada Corporation and Xage Security that provide device authentication and authorization on utility networks. Cohort 2 tested solutions from runZero and Asimily, which provide the ability to uncover hidden risks in utility industrial control systems.
CECA’s commercialization and pre-commercialization pathways are designed to be mutually reinforcing: utility advisors in the commercialization pathway provide information to technology partners on development pathways that might be desirable and inform testing environments. The pre-commercialization process can also introduce technologies to utilities, potential investors, and partners in the commercialization process that may be useful in their commercialization journey.
As mentioned in the National Cybersecurity StrategyCECA supports the improvement of cybersecurity in the energy sector by ensuring that current and emerging technologies are effectively evaluated and optimized for utility needs.
Technology owners from industry and government who would like to be considered for future evaluations are invited to email. CECA@nrel.gov.
CECA is managed by NREL and sponsored by DOE CESER and utility partners in collaboration with DOE’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy.
Learn more about CECA and program eligibilityand subscribe to CECA Email Updates.