Secure your substation against its next attack with our security checklist. Covering key steps you should take to boost your site’s protection against crime.
Substations and public utilities face several security risks which place key services like power, gas, water, and telecommunications in jeopardy.
With millions relying on these services, a lapse in operations is likely to cause large disruption, impacting the development of any new utility sites, active services, and potential or existing customers of them.
We explore the main vulnerabilities of substations and utilities, followed by a security checklist to help combat crime and prevent your next attack.
Why are Substations and Utilities Vulnerable to Attacks?
Critical infrastructure as an industry is vulnerable to attacks for several reasons, and these include:
- High-Value Materials - Most substations and utilities use high-value metals, making them vulnerable to metal and copper theft.
- Remote Locations - Often situated in remote, rural locations, substations and utility sites are greater targets for crime because of the limited response capacity in those areas.
- Severe Operational Disruption - Due to the heavy reliance on substation and utility services, this can leave them vulnerable to criminal damage, simply to cause maximum disruption.
- Aging Equipment - Older, outdated systems and equipment make cyberattacks easier for criminals to intercept, increasing the target placed upon the critical infrastructure industry.
- Limited Employee Presence - Many substations and utilities will be left unmanned outside of working hours, including overnight and during weekends, making them more susceptible to crime.
- Reduced Public Visibility - Due to their locations, there’s often reduced visibility on critical infrastructure sites, making them popular targets amongst criminals and Organized Crime Gangs (OCGs).
- Insufficient Security Measures - There is an assumed lack of surveillance with substations and utilities that make them enticing to thieves, vandals, and trespassers.
These various factors contribute to a heightened risk towards substations and utilities, and with so much on the line, skimping on your security isn’t an option.
A Security Checklist for Utilities to Protect Against Attacks
Cutting corners on your critical infrastructure security will likely lead to catastrophe with costs and your customers, so we’ve formed a security checklist all substations and utilities should take to maximize your site’s protection:
Complete a Risk Assessment of Your Substation and Utilities
Always start by completing a risk assessment of your substation or utilities site to establish any weak spots, access points, and dark areas which can be utilized by criminals and trespassers.
You could carry this out yourself as a business or have an external contractor with prior experience complete this on your behalf.
For those utility sites under development, there’s generally greater risks of crime such as theft and vandalism, making risk assessments central in the early stages to avoid facing any attacks throughout the project.
Risk assessments help to highlight areas of improvement and reveal any locations requiring additional security support.
Consider and Install Security Measures
Following any risk assessment, it’s likely that there will be blind spots and weak access points identified that will require security support to prevent any attacks in future.
The type of security required will depend on your utility site, the dangers presented to it, and other factors will help form the best protection and prevention tool against this.
For physical security and increased criminal deterrence, perimeter fencing and security guards can support this, but alone these can create gaps in which criminals can utilize to their benefit.
Hence why many utility sites are turning to mobile surveillance units to maximize their security and prevent any criminal attacks.
Mobile surveillance cameras offer the following benefits:
- Cost-effective, high-quality coverage
- Visible criminal deterrent factor
- Real-time monitoring
- Rapid deployment and complete flexibility
- Regulatory compliance
- Evidence gathering
- Remote accessibility
Overall, you should take a blended approach to your security, implementing both smaller and larger measures that cover the different risks, backed by mobile surveillance cameras for an all-rounded approach.
Create and Update Your Workplace Policies
Your employees play a vital part in your substation’s security, ensuring best practice to prevent any attacks on your utilities, both during the working day and following this.
As an employer it’s your responsibility to have workplace policies in place, covering a broad range of topics, including security.
It only takes one employee to cause a lapse in security and your substation or utility site is left vulnerable, therefore you need to ensure everyone is working on the same page.
Creating workplace policies helps to do this and can be distributed on a mass scale. However, you will need to update these on an appropriate basis, such as annually or bi-yearly.
Increase the Physical Security at Your Utilities Site
The presence of physical security at your utilities site plays a large role in preventing any attacks towards it.
Physical security tends to be provided via the form of security guards or surveillance cameras.
Both offer the visible criminal deterrent factor with their presence, whilst also actively monitoring and preventing unauthorized access or attacks from criminals.
One of the most popular, cost-effective solutions to offer this is Surveillance Trailers. Combining the live monitoring and recording technology with a powerful, bold design that deters and detects crime.
There are numerous benefits to our Surveillance Trailers, one being the physical presence they have at locations like critical infrastructure sites.
Standing at 20-ft tall and backed by audio deterrent features, including sirens and live audio challenges, our Trailers cannot be mistaken by any wanna-be criminals or intruders.
Ensure Employee Vetting and Training
As employers, every company would like to have complete trust in their employees, but this cannot be guaranteed and there’s too much at stake with substations and utilities to lack protection against insider threats.
The first step to implement with employee safety is to vet any potential employees to establish any criminal records that may impact your substation and its security.
This provides you with complete oversight on any future employees and minimizes the risk of any individuals posing danger to your site, working for your company.
Additionally, following this, your training should be designed to manage the risks presented to employees, as well as the consequences of insider crime to ensure all employees are aware of how to prevent an attack and protect themselves in the process.
Implement Access Control
Access control helps to restrict unauthorized entry onto your substation or utility site and creates a physical barrier against any potential attacks.
There are several access control measures you can implement:
- Perimeter fencing and gates
- Turnstiles and PINpad entry using employee ID cards
- Security patrols at entrance and exit points
- Biometric access systems
- Surveillance cameras
- Visitor registry systems
Every substation and utility site will differ in its requirements, so before applying various access control measures, consider other factors like, the required entry, type of critical infrastructure, and number of employees.
Simply applying multiple access control measures doesn’t necessarily mean increased security and could actually end up inhibiting employees and any emergency response teams.
Boost Monitoring of Your Utilities Site
Accurate monitoring of your substation or utilities site is a central step to securing your site against its next attack.
False alarms or late identification could lead your site facing an attack which could be catastrophic to your project or service.
To remain on top of this, any security systems should be proactive in the monitoring of threats.
Remote monitoring services can normally be added onto or back security solutions to provide proactive and precise threat detection and management.
Our full product range is backed by this service, utilizing a monitoring center of trained professionals who keep watch of your live video stream, assess threats, and respond effectively and promptly to them.
This helps improve your incident response and minimize the risk of any unauthorized access, further emphasizing the benefit video surveillance provides in securing critical infrastructure.
Review and Improve Your Cybersecurity Measures
Most substations and utilities sites integrate technology heavily into their systems nowadays, creating a greater risk of cyberattacks.
Security risks aren’t always provided in a physical form to your site, and you need to ensure you have the same strength of response to cyber threats as you do to physical ones.
Therefore, you should review your cybersecurity measures, employee training, and any protection currently in place to manage these threats.
If upon review you believe them to be outdated or require additional information, you should improve any measures in place and update any related policies.
Trusted, Established Utilities and Substation Security Solutions
As part of every security checklist, you should be ensuring that the suppliers you work with provide the service you require to protect against any attacks or risks presented to your utilities.
Having a trusted surveillance supplier like ourselves not only helps boost your site’s protection, but backs it with a high-quality service that supports and develops to your needs.
Our fully-managed service which supports all our products covers from the point of installation and ongoing customer care and technical support to system maintenance and decommissioning, relieving any burden of security from you.
We understand the need for reliability, which as an established supplier to critical infrastructure projects and sites, we have in-depth knowledge in.
Talk to our trusted surveillance experts today to find out how we can support your utilities and substations from their next attack.
