Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm
Kevin Dietsch/Getty ImagesThe U.S. power grid is vulnerable to shutdown by cyberattacks, Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm warned in interviews on Sunday on both CNN and NBC’s Meet the Press.
“There are thousands of attacks on all aspects of the energy sector and the private sector generally,” she said in the CNN interview. ”It’s happening all the time. This is why the private sector and the public sector have to work together.”
The comments followed recent attacks on Colonial Pipeline, the meatpacker JBS, and the Martha’s Vineyard ferry service, among others. Last week, Anne Neuberger, President Biden’s deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, wrote a letter to American corporations urging them to take the risks from ransomware more seriously.
In an interview on Sunday with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Granholm was asked if the country’s adversaries have the ability to shut down the U.S. power grid. “Yeah, they do,” she said. Granholm also noted that new regulations from the Transportation Security Administration require pipelines to report ransomware attacks when they happen in real time. While there are standards in place for protection of the electric grid, the same is not true at this point for pipelines, she said.
In May, President Biden issued an executive order on improving the country’s cybersecurity status. “The U.S. faces persistent and increasingly sophisticated malicious cyber campaigns that threaten the public sector, the private sector, and ultimately the American people’s security and privacy,” the order says. “The federal government must improve its efforts to identify, deter, protect against, detect, and respond to these actions and actors.”
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives on Monday wrote in a research note that intensifying focus on cybersecurity should boost spending on security software — and provide a boost to the shares of some companies in the sector.
“The attacks are increasing at an eye-popping rate, and we ultimately believe this is another broader sector growth catalyst for the cybersecurity industry over the next 12 to 18 months,” Ives wrote “We also believe the Biden administration is laser-focused on this troubling trend of cyberattacks and should catalyze more spending on the federal front.”
Ives sees the trend benefiting both large federal software contractors, like Telos (TLS) and Palantir Technologies (PLTR), as well as cybersecurity software vendors like Fortinet (FTNT), SailPoint (SAIL), CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD), Tenable Holdings (TENB), CyberArk Software (CYBR), Varonis Systems (VRNS), Zscaler (ZS), and Palo Alto Networks (PANW).
“We believe there is a $200 billion growth opportunity in cloud security alone ,” he wrote.
Ives adds that he has “high conviction” in the stocks in the group –and he also expects a “surge” of merger activity in the group driven by both strategic and financial buyers.
Write to eric.savitz@barrons.com
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