How cybersecurity can help push the boundaries of energy transition innovation

Cybersecurity is often seen as preparing for failure. It’s also often seen as a concern for digital leaders only. But cybersecurity can have a significant impact right across an organization. Cyberattacks affect market capitalization and research shows cyber-resilient organizations provide 50% more value to their shareholders.

Thinking about cybersecurity as loss avoidance and a digital-only issue misses key intangibles that can boost organizational value: trust, reputation, stakeholder confidence and the technical capacity needed to support rapid innovation. Cyber-resilient organizations, on the other hand, are able to continue to meet primary business goals and also even unlock additional value.

In the energy sector specifically, developing cyber-resilience should be seen as preparation for a successful energy transition. Energy infrastructure is critical to global economic activity. Around the world, public and private organizations are investing heavily in accelerating the transition to cleaner, more efficient energy systems. In 2023 alone, the International Energy Agency expected global investment in clean energy would exceed $1.7 trillion.

This ambitious investment in energy innovation is likely to dramatically change the energy sector – and it also reveals the importance of cybersecurity. New energy infrastructure centres on digital-native technologies like batteries, solar, wind and advanced turbines. So, as the pressure to move to renewables and make existing infrastructure more efficient continues to mount, digital technologies will be key to achieving the energy transition. This will also increase vulnerability to cyberthreats, however.

Developing abundant low-cost clean energy will require a supporting set of technologies, systems and standards. And more power production facilities will increase the need for smart, fast – likely automated – decision-making about how to distribute or store this power. This could mean more digital controls for operational technologies and more assets in need of cybersecurity protections.

Global ambitions to combat climate change and provide rising standards of living will depend on cyber-resilient systems. Cybersecurity systems will need to defend existing energy infrastructure, while also engendering consumer trust and investor confidence, if the world is to see new energy infrastructure rapidly deployed and sustained at scale.

By envisioning what it would take to support and secure this kind of clean energy growth, we can accelerate deployment of those solutions as they become available. Today’s smart phones deliver on the dream of Star Trek’s communicators, but without encryption, spam filters and software patches, this tech dream would be a nightmare. These support systems are necessary to advance the success of the core technology.

Cybersecurity can and should be an enabler for continued growth in clean energy too. For example, robust cybersecurity is a design requirement for autonomous power plants and distribution systems. It will make those systems more reliable, but also, trust is a prerequisite for market success. Some companies that have lost market and stakeholder trust after a cyber incident have seen their market value decrease by as much as $2 billion – not just because of direct losses, but because future business is imperiled.

Scaling up autonomy for these systems can only happen if automation earns the trust of customers throughout the supply chain. Companies with a strong track record of success in securing their systems will be better able to access markets interested in autonomous power plants and many other energy innovations.

Today’s cyber protections help define the parameters of the possible. Successfully protecting the technologies deployed today builds the trust needed to support the bigger advances that are still to come. Expanding cybersecurity capabilities will expand the energy technology business cases for any given risk appetite.

It’s useful to envision what support systems would be needed to scale up new, successful energy breakthroughs. But we must also envision what successful cybersecurity breakthroughs would look like – and their implications for energy systems. Cybersecurity innovators and investors have a key role to play in this. They should set ambitious goals and then build the systems – and the trust – needed to get there.

What would it take for automation to monitor for cyberthreats and respond without analyst intervention, for example? Can companies protect business partners by sharing cyber incident information faster? Can identity verification systems become frictionless for users? What would it take to secure every step of the energy supply chain?

Some of these goals will remain beyond reach for years to come. Even then, it’s hard to know which will eventually move from impossible to possible and whether that will happen in hard-fought increments or via big breakthroughs. That’s why it’s important for energy and cybersecurity innovators to continue to pursue and prepare for success. If energy companies earn trust by thinking through all of the implications of new technology ahead of time, the path towards innovation will become easier to navigate.