• Siemens, McAfee team up to defend against critical infrastructure attacks

    McAfee and Siemens will work together to help secure critical infrastructure against cyber attacks that target industrial control processes like the Stuxnet worm which destroyed nuclear centrifuges at an Iranian nuclear enrichment facility; the two companies are targeting Advanced Persistent Threats aimed at the manufacturing and process industry; this new security product could help ease security fears for critical infrastructure operators who rely on industrial control programs for nearly every automated process; McAfee says it’s Application Control system product would have protected Iran’s centrifuges from the Stuxnet virus that caused them to spin out of control

  • Tennessee may spend millions to improve nuclear reactor safety

    The Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) is considering spending millions of dollars to bolster its six nuclear reactors against earthquakes and floods; TVA is the first American nuclear plant operator to declare safety changes following events in Japan; TVA is currently considering reducing the amount of fuel that it stores in its spent fuel pools instead transferring older fuel rods to passively cooled “dry casks” ; the operator will also add additional back up diesel generators, make improvements to electrical grids to make them more earthquake resistant, add small generators to recharge cell phone batteries and to keep lights on, and reinforce pipes that send cold water to spent fuel pools

  • Google invests $168 million in world’s largest solar tower

    Google recently announced that it will invest $168 million to help fund a massive solar power project in California’s Mojave Desert; when completed the solar tower will be the world’s generating 392 megawatts of energy and powering 140,000 homes; the solar facility will be built by BrightSource Energy and has been dubbed the Ivanpah Solar Electric Generating System; BrightSource has already raised roughly $1.6 billion dollars including loan guarantees from the U.S. Department of Energy and a $300 million investment from NRG Energy Inc.; the tower is expected to reduce carbon dioxide emissions by 400,000 tons per year and is scheduled to be completed in 2013

  • CybersecurityRussian bloggers fall victim to cyber attacks

    Earlier this month LiveJournal, a major Russian blogging site, was the victim of a large cyber attack; bloggers believe that it was a move meant to silence political dissent in advance of the country’s elections; the site was brought down by a distributed denial of service (DDos) attack; SUP, the owners of LiveJournal, said that the recent attacks were the worst in its company’s history and unprecedented in that it targeted the entire website rather than individual blogs; the majority of Russia’s opposition leaders and political activists maintain blogs on LiveJournal that they use as platforms to gain support and spread their message

  • Joint EU and U.S. cyber security exercise to be held this year

    The United States and the European Union (EU) recently announced that they will hold joint cyber war exercises by the end of 2011; the exercise comes as part of a broader agreement to expand efforts to jointly defend against cyber security threats; the two sides agreed to share best practices, engage the private sector, and increase global cyber incident response capabilities; in particular, the agreement will focus on fighting botnets, securing industrial control systems, and enhancing the resilience and stability of the internet