Mar 12 2024: The CEO of Westenergie in Germany has urged policymakers to collaborate with grid operators to strengthen responses to incidents like the recent arson attack near Tesla’s gigafactory near Berlin.
Katherina Reiche, Chief Executive Officer of Westenergie, emphasized the need to reassess security measures and establish a more robust legal framework during a press conference in Duesseldorf.
Reiche highlighted the vulnerability of critical infrastructure, citing Westnetz’s efforts to restore power to tens of thousands of households in western Germany after the 2021 floods.
She stressed the importance of rethinking strategies against deliberate and targeted human actions, referring to the recent arson attack on Tesla’s Gruenheide factory by the far-left group Vulkangruppe, which resulted in a week-long outage.
Reiche acknowledged the challenge of achieving complete protection for such networks at all times and pointed out that other critical sectors like gas and telecommunications are also susceptible to attacks.
Regarding transparency rules for infrastructure data, Reiche suggested that a review might be necessary, as publicly available data could potentially expose vulnerabilities and provide indications to attackers.
Westenergie is a part of the utility group E.ON.
