Sentar awarded federal grant to bolster nuclear plant cybersecurity

Alabama-based cybersecurity intelligence firm Sentar has been given Department of Energy funding for a proof-of-concept study aimed at addressing cybersecurity threats impacting nuclear power plants across the U.S. and bolstering the sector's cyber defenses, United Press International reports. "Cyber resilience and reliability must become an operational imperative for critical infrastructure. It is essential to have the ability to mitigate damage once subjected to a cyberattack and continue to maintain operations when systems or data have been compromised," said Sentar Senior Research Director Gary Mayes. Such a grant comes after Chinese state-sponsored threat operations were reported by Booz-Allen to have been targeting U.S. critical infrastructure with attacks that are just below the war threshold. The U.S. has been moving to address critical infrastructure security threats with the recently unveiled National Cybersecurity Strategy, which sought to strengthen cyber risk mitigation efforts with the assistance of the public sector, as well as a more robust federal incentives program for long-term cybersecurity investments.