Powering the G-7 Summit

Created a robust cyber defense system at a major power facility in record time.

The 2016 G-7 Summit was scheduled for May in Ise-Shima, a bucolic peninsula in Japan. Chubu Electric Power Co., Inc., Japan’s third-largest electric utility, with nearly 17,000 employees and more than US$25bn in annual revenue, needed to fortify its defences against cyberattacks to keep the lights on for the event. An outage would have halted proceedings and forced an evacuation of hundreds of people, including world leaders.

Time was not on Chubu Electric Power’s side. With only five months until the gathering, the company turned to PwC for help.

Chubu Electric Power had two large technology divisions with thousands of employees in each. One focused on internal IT systems and the other managed the grid technology; the two operations had very few connections and were unaccustomed to working together. But Internet-based technologies were now linking the systems of both divisions and increasing the number of potential vulnerabilities. Both groups had to work side by side to keep the system secure.

The first step was to identify the risks in the current operations. Chubu Electric Power worked with PwC to develop analytics processes that would help the utility identify attacks in their earliest stages. This was key because there was no time to install new security systems. Under the direction of Chubu Electric Power’s CEO, the two divisions developed processes for collaboration and developed defensive strategies to thwart attacks. To assure the defenses would be implemented as planned, Chubu Electric Power created scenarios and drills. Senior executives took an active role in these exercises to underscore their importance. Within five weeks the system was ready: everyone in the two divisions knew which roles they had to play.

The G-7 summit went off without problems. The major long-term benefit for Chubu Electric Power was not only a successful summit but also the development of a collaborative culture where employees from different parts of the utility worked together. In addition, Chubu Electric Power now had robust defensive measures in place, along with a road map of the vulnerabilities that could be further contained using new cybersecurity technologies.