Electricity Is a Growing Area of Cyber Risk

The report warns that modern programmable DC power regulators have become an overlooked cybersecurity dependency: firmware and supporting software vulnerabilities (dozens of CVEs) can enable attackers to hide below the OS, create backdoors, cause denial-of-service across multiple systems, or compromise safety-critical OT such as connected vehicles. It recommends treating power regulation as part of security architecture—applying segmentation, monitoring, secure boot and cryptographic signing, and increasing awareness as complexity (and AI use) in power control grows.