GUC’s Electric Department was awarded a $275,924 grant to improve cybersecurity infrastructure and data collection at all its substations. Keeping cyberattacks off the grid is a priority for GUC, but also for municipalities across the country as national concern over network infiltration grows. 

The grant GUC was awarded is distributed by the American Public Power Association (APPA) and funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Rural and Municipal Utility Cybersecurity Program. This program is specifically designed to support public power utilities’ efforts to protect against, detect, respond to, and recover from cybersecurity threats all while sharing threat information. 

“Cybersecurity continues to be one of Public Power’s greatest threats. Grant opportunities like this are vital in assisting public power in our ongoing fight against cybercrimes,” David Osburn, APPA Board Chairman, said in a news release in 2024 about APPA’s partnership with the DOE. 

To increase electric grid cybersecurity, GUC sought and was awarded the grant to monitor the electric system thoroughly while also monitoring the physical components of security like attempted break-ins.  

Substation Control Engineer John Powell said the grant will be used to make equipment and overall system upgrades that can detect cyber infiltration, along with providing granular data that proves to be valuable when identifying what hackers and bad actors are looking for within the network. 

“The upgrade will help all of our substation sites,” John said. “It will detect attempted breaches in the system and put that information into one database. These upgrades will give us more insights into what is happening across our system with real-time analysis.” 

Successful Pilot Program Expands 
The implementation of this upgrade is not an entirely new project for Electric. They had already kicked off a successful pilot program with this technology at several sites, and this grant will support the expansion of it to all sites.  

Director of Information Technology Andy Anderson said he saw that APPA was offering funding to increase cybersecurity measures of public power systems and brought the opportunity to the attention of leadership within the Electric Department. 

“APPA was focused on event detection and data sharing,” Andy said. “It will enhance our ability to detect events within the electrical network and remediate them. The data is shared back to help the larger US grid infrastructure to detect a problem, as well.” 

The team that worked to secure this grant and begin the full system implementation of the cybersecurity improvements are John, Andy, Electric Engineer II Nick Peaden, Substation/Controls Engineering Coordinator Vann Stephenson, and Substation/Controls Engineering Assistant II Will Spencer.  

IT Wraps up Cybersecurity Grant Projects  

In 2023, GUC was awarded a $100,000 grant through the federal government’s State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program (SLCGP). Since then, the funding has allowed GUC’s IT Department to further enhance our cyber resilience through a series of projects they finished implementing in 2024. 

"Thanks to the cybersecurity grant funds, we successfully implemented zero trust architecture on our network and strengthened endpoint protection for our mobile devices,” said Tony Godwin, IT Infrastructure Manager. “Now, unknown devices are automatically isolated until they are verified and approved, ensuring a more secure environment. Additionally, our mobile devices are continuously monitored in real-time, allowing us to detect and stop active threats immediately."     

SLCGP, which is now in its third year, was established to help state, local, and territorial governments address increasingly sophisticated cyber threats to critical infrastructure and public safety. The program is jointly managed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), which provides cybersecurity expertise and guidance, and Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which manages the grant award and allocation process. 

GUC’s grant is part of an overall $1 billion that will be distributed through the program over a four-year period to help governments develop capabilities to detect, protect against, and respond to cyber threats.