Dive Brief:
- The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC) is the most sophisticated threat analysis and intelligence sharing partnership between any industry and the intelligence community, said Richard Struse, the chief of advanced cybersecurity technology at the Department of Homeland Security.
- The Electricity Sector Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ES-ISAC), a similar partnership for the electric power sector, needs to catch up with its sister program, sources told EnergyWire.
- "The vision is to be a one-stop shop" of threat analysis for the electric industry, said Brian Harrell, ES-ISAC program director for the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC). For that to happen, ES-ISAC's capabilities will need improve by, for example, automating the sharing of threat data like FS-ISAC, Struse said.
Dive Insight:
How did the financial sector get so far ahead?
"These are threats the electrical sector hasn't had to worry about as much until fairly recently," a source at ISAC told EnergyWire. "The financial sector has a head start because they had to respond to threats much earlier."
Both organizations were set up in collaboration with the Department of Homeland Security under a 1999 directive, but attacks on banks were more common in the early days of cyberattacks as they had money -- making them a relatively simple and highly desirable target.
"What we're seeing is, the financial services sector is out in front because they got engaged early, and frankly, they've put [in] significant resources" said Struse.
Since January, ES-ISAC membership has risen 16% -- with about 85% of all U.S. transmission owners, operators and reliability groups now counted as members.