Effort on to Protect USA Power Grid

By JIM PAUL

The Associated Press
Wednesday, August 17, 2005

URBANA, Ill. -- Researchers armed with $7.5 million from the federal government are setting out to develop a computer network that can improve the reliability of the nation's vulnerable power grid and make it secure from attack.

The project follows the largest blackout in U.S. history, which left millions of people in the Northeast and southern Canada without power in August 2003.

"Although the blackout was accidental, it showed that current controls and computer software are inadequate," said William H. Sanders, director of the university's Information Trust Institute. " Today, people are trying to patch it. But those patches will not get us to where we need to be." See details