• The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources listened to recommendations Tuesday on what steps should be taken on public, private, state and federal levels to protect the grid from cyber threats.
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid hopes to bring a cybersecurity bill to the floor soon, and smart grid concerns may be addressed by such legislation.
• "It's probably the most significant thing that we deal with," Joseph McClelland, director of FERC's Office of Electric Reliability, said. "And it actually has a potential to become much worse, because as we add equipment that was previously dumb equipment to make it smart equipment and give it two-way communication and then give it the ability to speak with the largest generators on the system or to have a nexus to the largest generators on the equipment, then we've introduced a vulnerability, and it would be like online banking without cybersecurity."

From the article:

With a possible debate on cybersecurity legislation looming in the Senate, energy regulators on Tuesday warned lawmakers of the pressing threats facing the nation's power grid.

Appearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, a panel of witnesses stressed that any bill the full chamber approves must provide for a more fluid system of sharing information about cyber threats, both between public and private entities and between federal and state and local authorities. ...