Enhancing the Cyber Resilience of Offshore Wind

Explaining the science

The UK’s Energy Security Strategy and the Powering Up Britain blueprint, describes the government’s mission to have up to 5 GW of floating offshore wind operating by 2030, backed up by £160 million in ports and supply chains, and £31 million in research and development.

Cyberattacks on offshore wind farms across Europe have highlighted the vulnerability and far-reaching conferences of cyberattacks on offshore wind farms, including power outages, damage, injury, environmental disasters and leakages in sensitive data. The physical and economic damage from these attacks often continue long after the cyberattacks halt and the remote nature of offshore wind farms means that recovery is often slow and expensive. If cybersecurity considerations are not built into infrastructure development projects, this could lead to a missed opportunity to enhance cyber resilience for systems that can last decades.

Electricity is also an ageing infrastructure and has not been designed for the state-of-the-art in cybersecurity in mind. Moreover, UK energy infrastructure interconnects with bordering countries and in the future, there are likely to be more interconnected energy systems between nations. This raises questions around shared infrastructure and security response towards cybersecurity threats.