The U.S. Department of Energy has established and funded the new Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response (CESER).
CESER will focus on energy infrastructure security and support the additional national security responsibilities the DOE has been assigned. The section will be headed by an assistant secretary and has an initial funding of $96 million that is part of the fiscal 2019 budget request.
“This new office best positions the Department to address the emerging threats of tomorrow while protecting the reliable flow of energy to Americans today,” U.S. Secretary of Energy Rick Perry said in a statement.
Perry has stated that cybersecurity is among his core missions heading the DOE. During a visit earlier ths month to the Savannah River Site nuclear reservation in Georgia he called this task his biggest challenge, according to a report in Government Technology.
“The thing that I'm really most concerned that's in our wheelhouse (is) cybersecurity, and our ability to protect and defend this country,” Perry said. “Statutorily, we're the agency responsible for the electrical grid – and the protection of it, the resiliency of it, etc. Our national labs are obviously involved in concentric circles out from that, from the standpoint of cybersecurity, and working with other agencies in the government about how to defend our country against cyberattacks,” he said.
