Power grid security

Blockchains To Protect UK’s Nuclear Power Plants

Power plants are some of the most critical bits on infrastructure. An attack against a power plant could incapacitate an entire region of any country. This is doubly true for nuclear power plants. Moreover, an attack against a nuclear power facility could have disastrous consequences, making an area uninhabitable for millennia. With more and more critical systems moving “online” an attack need not be physical to inflict untold damage.

To protect the nation’s nuclear power plants from cyber attacks, the UK government has employed security specialists Guardtime to provide cyber defences. The deal covers flood defences and the electrical grid as well.

Guardtime’s Keyless Signature Infrastructure (KSI) blockchain technology is based on hash-function cryptography. Blockchains were made famous by the digital currency BitCoin, but Guardtime’s usage of the technology predates it. In essence, KSI provides security by distributing data to trusted nodes over private, secure networks of validators.