Energy Cybersecurity

Raising the Bar in the Natural Gas Sector

Energy has always been an attractive target for bad actors, but natural gas has become the poster child for how digital risks translate into real-world disruption.  When you’re moving gas across the country at a pressure up to 1,500 psi, it’s fair to say time is a factor. When an incident hits, the last thing organizations want is a ticket queue and a round of phone calls just to shut down a suspicious account. Energy cybersecurity lives and dies on response time. Incident responders can instantly revoke the privileges, which means they vanish as soon as a compromise is suspected. What once took hours can happen in seconds. That isn’t just convenient; it’s the difference between a bad day and a lost weekend.

“Cybersecurity is the real threat to grid resilience.” - Richard D. Kauzlarich

When the Colonial Pipeline ransomware incident hit in 2021, it didn’t just cut off fuel supplies and act as a knock-on effect for national chaos. It reshaped regulation. What had been polite “guidance” quickly hardened into binding international cybersecurity standards, and operators were left scrambling to prove they weren’t the next headline.

Gas in The Cloud

The problem is, energy cybersecurity isn’t tidy. Natural gas sits at the crossroads of IT, OT, and cloud, which is as comfortable a mix as oil and water. Pipelines still run SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) and industrial control systems (ICS) designed for uptime, not defense. Gas-fired power plants get pulled into the gravity well of NERC CIP, with some of the strictest cybersecurity standards anywhere. Upstream operators often straddle decades-old legacy systems and sprawling cloud environments. Every corner of the industry has different regulators, but adversaries don’t care where the paperwork ends.

For pipelines, DHS’s post-Colonial security directives made one thing clearer than helium: standing admin rights are out. Access has to be segmented, monitored, and pulled back when it’s no longer needed. Incidents have to be reported within 24 hours. That’s not something organizations can achieve with spreadsheets and promises. It demands access automation that’s defensible under scrutiny.

For natural gas plants connected to the bulk electric grid, NERC CIP adds even more rigor. Privilege creep and forgotten accounts aren’t just risks; they’re violations that come with penalties. CIP auditors don’t want to see your policy PowerPoint. They want evidence that least privilege is enforced, rights are revoked the moment roles change, and that you can show it all in black and white.

Even upstream, where the rules are lighter, expectations are higher. Investors, boards, and insurers increasingly look for alignment with NIST’s Cybersecurity Framework and the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Cybersecurity Capability Maturity Model (C2M2). Failing to keep pace doesn’t just risk an intrusion; it raises premiums, spooks partners, and leaves you explaining why your systems became the weak link.

Timed Access

This is where just-in-time access earns its keep. Instead of handing out broad rights and hoping for the best, access is granted only for the task at hand and revoked immediately after use. Hundreds of permanent admin accounts collapse into a handful of short-lived sessions. For CISOs and security teams, this delivers two big wins: the attack surface shrinks dramatically, and the audit evidence is there when regulators come knocking.

Multiple Gas Clouds

Visibility is the other half of the equation. Natural gas operators increasingly straddle hybrid worlds, with identity silos across cloud providers, corporate IT, and control networks. Without unification, you can’t know whether a contractor has redundant rights in AWS, Azure, and cloud-based SCADA systems, or whether a former employee’s dormant account is still hanging around like a ghost. Consolidated entitlement visibility exposes those weak links before adversaries or regulators do.

Trust and Control

Energy cybersecurity today is as much about trust as it is about technology. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants proof of segmentation. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) wants audit-ready evidence of least privilege. Boards and insurers want to see that identity risk is controlled, not hand-waved. Delivering on that builds resilience that’s visible and defensible.

The natural gas sector can’t control when attackers try their luck or when regulators tighten the rules. But it can control how strong and how provable its defenses are. By automating access, enforcing zero standing privileges, and unifying identity visibility, operators shift from scrambling to comply to confidently leading the conversation.

Because in the end, energy cybersecurity isn’t about ticking boxes. It’s about whether a provider’s systems can stand up to the next breach attempt, the next user error, the next regulator’s audit, or the next insurer’s questionnaire. Those who embrace automation and least privilege will not only pass the test, they’ll keep the gas flowing, the lights on, and their boards off the front page.

If you’d like to learn more about how we support the energy sector, please drop us a message for a no-obligation demo. We’re always here to help.