The Standing Committee on Energy has rapped the Centre for laxity in safeguarding the cybersecurity of the country’s electricity infrastructure amid ongoing government schemes that aim to ramp up the integration of the national grid infrastructure with the internet.

“As the committee believes that the matter of cyber security of the power system is very critical, it would recommend that the Ministry of Power must take this issue more seriously and formulate effective and adequate safeguards in this regard,” the committee said in its report presented to Parliament on Monday.

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“Since the country has decided to go ahead with the smart grid and smart metering technologies in a big way, the committee is of the view that such issues could wreak havoc in the energy sector, if we are not prepared with a foolproof plan to timely avert them,” the report added.

The committee, headed by JD(U) MP Rajiv Ranjan Lalan Singh, criticised the government for not properly investigating the cause of the disconnection of 1.5 lakh home connections with smart meters during August last year in Uttar Pradesh.

The government has told the committee that “Energy Efficiency Services Limited had investigated this incident and the disconnection was being done from HES (Head End System) and it has been moved to the MDM which is better practice. It was further said that so far, it has not come to any conclusion relating to cyber security aspect or of any sabotage and EESL has been asked to take corrective actions,” the report said.

At the time of disconnection, a senior EESL official had told BusinessLine that the breach was a case of sabotage by an insider at EESL’s vendor L&T, which was tasked with manning the Head-End System.

Last month, Massachusetts-based cybersecurity firm Recorded Future reported that it had conducted an investigation and found the presence of Chinese state-backed hackers in the systems of at least 10 electricity assets, mainly those owned by NTPC and POSCO.

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