GLENN’S BEEN SOUNDING THIS WARNING FOR 15 YEARS: Escalating threats to infrastructure confirm our need to harden the electric grid.

DHS described the attacks as “a multi-stage intrusion campaign” designed to infiltrate low security and small networks to gain access and then move laterally to the networks of “major, high value asset owners within the energy sector.” DHS said it is confident that the campaign is ongoing, and hackers are actively pursuing the long-term objective of being able to access and manipulate the computer networks of their targets.

Central to any scheme to damage industries and handicap the U.S. economy is the ability to manipulate or control our national power grid – the vast, highly inter-connected network of power plants, wires, poles, transformers and cables that deliver our nation’s lifeblood — electricity — to hundreds of millions of homes, businesses and critical service organizations every minute, every day. We need look no further than the massive impact of recent hurricanes in Florida and Puerto Rico to understand the price of being without power.

The unfortunate reality is that the national electric grid is vulnerable to a variety of potential attacks, natural and man-made, and every U.S. president since 1990 has acknowledged that fact and pledged to promptly address the looming potential risks. But little has been done at the federal level to develop the kind of comprehensive policy, process and financing mechanisms that are necessary to ensure the grid is made as robust and resilient as today’s threat demand.

Indeed.