RIYADH: As global momentum builds toward cleaner and smarter energy systems, cyberattacks on power grids and transmission lines are emerging as a growing challenge to resilience.

Speaking to Arab News on the sidelines of the Global Cybersecurity Forum in Riyadh, Heidi Crebo-Rediker, senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, said that investment in energy infrastructure was critical to protect against cyberattacks, which were becoming a major threat to energy systems worldwide.

“I think that the under-investment in the energy grid and energy related infrastructure is obviously a critical priority,” she said. “Finding the money to do that, and the will to do that, is a challenge, and it falls on both public and private hands. So it’s really whose responsibility is it to pay for it, who prioritizes, but at the end of the day, if we don’t have a resilient energy infrastructure, then we have potentially massive, catastrophic shocks to businesses and to the economy at large.”

A recent Boston Consulting Group report said that quantum computing could unlock more than $50 billion in value across industries, with energy representing the largest opportunity. In oil and gas alone, the potential savings range from $6 billion to $30 billion.

“We already know that attacks from traditional types of threats can be catastrophic for the energy infrastructure, but cyber is a dominant risk,” Crebo-Rediker said.

She emphasized that resilience depended on effective cooperation, both domestically and internationally. “It’s not just collaboration between public and private,” she said. “Energy is global, and having cooperation between different countries on cybersecurity is imperative.”

Crebo-Rediker said that governance models also mattered, noting that “you have to have a much better working relationship between the public sector and the private sector.”

She added that it was difficult to know if enough was being invested until an effective cyberattack occured. “You never know if you’ve spent enough and invested enough, and if you’re resilient enough, until you are able to counter an attack that would otherwise shut you down,” she said.

“The idea is really to minimize the impact of cyberattacks, because as part of critical infrastructure you can’t have a functioning economy without your energy systems working.”

Crebo-Rediker added that the stakes were particularly high in regions where extreme climates or advanced industries demanded constant power. “For parts of the world that are either very hot, very cold, or dependent on high-tech industries, chip manufacturing companies, fabs (high-technology fabrication plants), all require constant energy to keep their systems operational, otherwise you have cascading negative effects on industry as a result,” she said.

Margarete Schramboeck, board member of Aramco Digital, said that energy security must be treated as the backbone of every economy.

“The energy sectors are the lifelines of each economy. We have seen this. If these lifelines are cut or not functioning anymore, the whole economy can go down,” she said. “A good energy sector is therefore key for each economy, and therefore it becomes a target for cybersecurity attacks, and it needs to be protected.”

Schramboeck highlighted the challenge of modernizing outdated systems. “In a lot of countries around the world, energy sectors are sometimes an infrastructure that is old,” she said. “So how can you combine innovations from the digital sector with these old investments which are actually not connected, which is difficult to handle.

“To find solutions, there is the key role for the next generations, and these generations, especially a lot of startups, but also existing big tech companies, invest a lot of their brains into solving this topic.”

She highlighted the importance of ongoing investment. “For the energy industry, there is continuous spending needed and, in my view, it will grow over the years,” she said. “When we see the next generations of threats coming ahead, there will be new investments needed. And I want to mention especially one big investment, which is absolutely necessary. It is into human capital. It’s into the next generation, the young people, training them, educating them.”

Schramboeck said that the Kingdom was also driving innovation in energy. “For the energy infrastructure, Saudi Arabia is really doing a lot ... There is a lot of investment in startups and an ecosystem of next-generation energy solutions. And this has started a few years ago and is continuing, and I am convinced it will have a positive impact soon.

“It’s always about these two factors. It’s in investment in hardware, software and innovative solutions on the one hand side, but even more in people. Only when both are considered and taken care of, then we’re looking into a safe and secure future.”

The Global Cybersecurity Forum concluded on Thursday after two days of discussions with policymakers and industry leaders, under the theme “Scaling Cohesive Advancement in Cyberspace.”