Nova Scotia Power incident report sheds some light on cyberattack response
CBC
Nova Scotia Power is providing more information about the cyberattack on the utility earlier this year and its response in the months that followed.
The utility submitted an incident report to the province’s energy board on Tuesday after the board requested Nova Scotia Power provide more details about several aspects of the breach before the end of the year.
“The company considers that its response to the incident — encompassing containment, remediation, and investigation — was effective and executed in a very timely and highly coordinated manner,” stated the 43-page report.
The energy board, which is conducting its own investigation into the cyberattack, asked for the report this summer after Nova Scotia Power was hacked in March.
The personal information of thousands of customers was compromised by the cyberattack but the utility said it continues to find no evidence that its infrastructure was threatened.
The board requested Nova Scotia Power provide detailed accounts of several things including how it detected the cyberattack, a timeline of subsequent events, whether or not there were any signs of cyber threats before the breach and whether the utility has identified any security gaps since the breach.
Nova Scotia Power officials have said it was likely a Russian agent that gained access to the company's digital systems on March 19. The utility didn’t notice customers' personal information had been compromised until April 25.
The utility contacted law enforcement agencies such as the Canadian Centre for Cybersecurity, RCMP and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service two days later, according to the report. The report said Nova Scotia Power also notified the FBI.
Most other details of the subsequent response are redacted in the report submitted to the energy board.
Nova Scotia Power also redacted several paragraphs regarding the actions taken to remediate the breach.
In addition to the incident report, Nova Scotia submitted a request to the energy board on Tuesday seeking confidentiality for some of the information in the report.
The board will decide whether or not to approve the request at a later date and, in the meantime, the redacted version of the report is available to the public.
A spokesperson for the energy board said Tuesday it was early to comment on the incident report.
Nova Scotia Power did not respond to a request for comment.
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