Economic Impacts of Cyber Security in Energy Sector: A Review

The new age digital age is bringing rapid change in the form of connections, integration, supply chain management, models and much more. As a result, security is a big business, securing critical data, operations, the customer profile is beyond the four wall of physical security. It is therefore essential to re-look on the definition of security and increase resilience on technology. The electric power system comprises of both IT infrastructures and electrical systems which include cyber systems, people, physical systems, money. Threats can be physical, internal or external threats and cyber threats can emerge from anywhere. Tackling cybercrimes and cyber-attacks on the energy sector poses major challenges on its own. These threats cannot be eliminated but only mitigated. The threat mitigation costs money, efforts, downtime, economic and psychological impacts on the industry that could result in damage to company s performance and the national economies. The paper aims to highlight various security attacks on the energy infrastructure and its economic impacts. While discussing the economics, the paper presents mechanism, and emphasizes the need for global security coordination to mitigate threats.