Diving into cybersecurity and energy projects in rural Alaska

November 28, 2024

Cybersecurity is critical to any organization. Energy utilities are especially unique in that a cybersecurity incident affecting power production also impacts other critical infrastructure systems such as water treatment plants, hospitals and airports.

Alaska is dependent on in-state energy utilities to generate electrical power. While communities connected to the Railbelt grid can share energy, many remote communities not connected to the grid rely on a single energy facility to generate power. As cybersecurity incidents become more common, taking necessary precautions becomes even more critical in those communities.

To help rural communities be better equipped with protections against cyberattacks, ACEP intern Joy Lomelino worked under the guidance of John Haverlack to create and deploy a cybersecurity gap assessment for small energy utilities in Alaska.

A gap assessment is a series of interview questions that investigate the specifics of an organization's security risk profile. These questions cover everything from password protocols and network monitoring to physical security, such as locked doors or if passwords are written on sticky notes in plain view.

A gap assessment can give organizations a baseline understanding of their current cybersecurity level. Once they understand where they are, they can develop a plan to make changes toward a more secure environment.

Throughout her internship, Lomelino performed multiple gap assessments with employees at a rural Alaska energy utility and UAF research labs.

While the majority of Lomelino’s project focused on cybersecurity policy and organizational procedures, she also learned about technical aspects of cybersecurity such as installing a firewall and deploying a Wi-Fi hotspot. Through these activities, Lomelino gained a better understanding of the use of binary (examination the machine-executable code, consisting of sequences of 0s and 1s, to identify vulnerabilities, malicious behavior and security flaws in software) and subnetting (dividing a bigger network into smaller networks to maintain security and efficiency) and she was exposed to many different computer science and cybersecurity-related topics.

Lomelino grew up in Wasilla, Alaska, and is a senior at UAF this fall. She is pursuing a B.S. in cybersecurity with a minor in environmental change. She participated in an ACEP summer internship after her freshman year and was excited to return as an intern on a project directly related to cybersecurity.

Lomelino said that the internship was an amazing opportunity to get hands-on experience in the technical and organizational components of cybersecurity and to see their application in relation to energy in Alaska.

“It was great to get some exposure to the policy side of cybersecurity while solidifying my own understanding of the topics so that I could condense the questions into a form that was shorter and more accessible,” she said.

“The opportunity to get firsthand experience performing gap assessments was really valuable for my own understanding of how cybersecurity protocols look in the professional world.”

This internship is funded by the Office of Naval Research’s Alaska Regional Collaboration for Technology Innovation and Commercialization program through the ACEP Undergraduate Summer Internship program. View the final presentation for this project on ACEP’s YouTube Chanel. For more information on this project, please contact John Haverlack at jehaverlack@alaska.edu.