For years the security community has viewed internal resources as presenting the greatest cyber risk to an entity. In 2021, shortly on the heels of the much-publicized SolarWinds breach, as well as many other supply chain/third party cyber breaches, it can be argued that supply chain/third parties now represent a greater cyber risk than insiders. This poses an extremely difficult problem to address given the number of third parties providing technology services to critical infrastructure entities and the nature of the services provided by the third parties. Acumen, a Hometown Connections cybersecurity partner, provides context and a 5-step process to address these risks.
Read More about Supply Chain/Third Party Breaches — Your New #1 Highest Cyber Risk »
The U.S. energy sector is in the midst of massive transformation in response to the quest to reduce carbon footprints across all commerce and industry. This coupled with concerns over waste mitigation and sustainability has changed virtually everything in the supply chains. Even the boardrooms of major corporations and stockholders are demanding answers to long-term environmental agendas. Then, the COVID-19 pandemic has forced almost everyone to rethink the way they do business, hastening the adoption of digital solutions to what was an in-person business model. A new report by 
To provide customers with several payment options, the Utilities Department of the 
Remember when everyone had a Rolodex and every phone had a cord? Look how far we’ve come since then. Long gone are the days of manually entering phone numbers and survey answers. Now, we’re living in the Computer Assisted Telephone Interviewing (CATI) era.
Utilities in the United States are prime targets for cyber attack. Criminals are hijacking utility information systems and demanding ransom for their release. Nation states and other bad actors are rehearsing ways to interrupt utility services and throw the nation into chaos. Community-owned utilities of all sizes and structures must shore up their cyber defenses. This article presents the top 10 cybersecurity considerations for community utilities and their city departments.
The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season was the busiest on record, with 31 depressions, 30 storms and 13 hurricanes. Fires in the West were devastating, with California suffering its worst year on record. The Midwest has also been inundated with ice storms throughout the year. The overlapping timing and geographic spread of these events, combined with unexpected operational disruptions caused by COVID-19, made 2020 a particularly challenging year to ensure power resiliency in the U.S. With 2,100 managed microgrid systems across the country, PowerSecure provided clean, reliable, and resilient power to commercial and industrial customers during 2020’s unanticipated grid outages.
When carrier pigeons fell out of favor (a shame, really), the telephone stepped in to take its place. 118 years after the invention of telephone, the first smartphone was released in 1994. And a mere 27 years after its introduction, a record