Digital Resilience Webinar Series: Cyber Risks Amidst COVID-19

Cyber Risks Amidst COVID-19

As part of our Insight work on Dynamic Resilience, the Council and our partners Marsh & McLennan launched a three-part webinar series focusing on the risks and opportunities of the energy sector’s expanding digital footprint. Digitization of the energy sector is a critical enabler of the energy transition. Yet the rapid pace of innovation, growing technological complexity, increased data sharing and interconnectivity, coupled with rising cyberattack sophistication and the sector’s attractiveness as a cyber target, are creating evolving risks for the sector.

This webinar focused on the cyber risks companies are facing amidst the COVID-19 crisis, with increased potential vulnerabilities as employees shift to remote working. Various practical suggestions for immediate action were presented to keep up with the evolving risks and improve the cyber resilience of systems.

Workforce resilience and broader impacts of remote working were key themes of the webinar. Businesses must pivot to new and different strategies simultaneously to adjust to the current crisis and ensure that their business remains viable and valuable. Agile strategic planning was featured as an enabler to help businesses quickly adjust to different scenarios in real time, and to stay relevant. New workplace standards may be required for a prolonged period to minimise the possibility of a COVID-19 resurgence.

Participation was open to the World Energy Council’s community for Member Committees and Future Energy Leaders. 

The first and third webinars in the series were:

Webinar 1: Tuesday 10 March

Cyber Security: 3 Clicks from Collapse? How an organization responds to a cyber-attack is critical to its overall recovery. However, the processes and mechanisms for response and recovery of digital power infrastructure may be less tested than responses to physical events. This session will guide participants through a scenario of a cyber event and critical decision points in the detection and response phase with insights and perspectives from an experienced panel.

Webinar 3: Tuesday 2 June

Enabling Energy Transition and Evolving Nexus focusing on the emerging digital and cyber challenges in the energy transition with adjacent sectors (such as mobility and prosumers) enabled by “digital seamlessness”