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ANJOS NIJK Europe’s influential industry body for energy infrastructure is helping the continent’s power utilities become savvier to cyber threats. ANJOS NIJK IS THE CURRENT MANAGING DIRECTOR OF THE EUROPEAN NETWORK for Cyber Security (ENCS). Based in The Hague, and founded in 2012, the ENCS is a non-profit member organisation that brings together critical infrastructure stake owners and security experts to deploy secure European critical energy grids and infrastructure. ENCS has dedicated researchers and test specialists who work with the association’s members and partners on applied research, defining technical security requirements, component and end-to-end testing, along with education and training. The ENCS serves as an important point-of-crossover between the worlds of Information Technology of the enterprise world and Operational Technology that predominates in the infrastructural domains of national and international power infrastructure. In 2018 the ENCS completed its first course of a training programme designed to help cyber security architects design secure smart grids, looking at risk-based architecture design and the IT/OT interface design. “There are many measures from the IT world that are applicable to OT systems,” Nijk said at the time. “Using too many measures will cause high investment costs and may make the system hard to use; [but use] too few, and the system is vulnerable. Assessing that balance requires thorough understanding of the systems and risks involved.” BIOGRAPHY
In addition to his ENCS duties, Nijk is a member of the Steering Committee of the Smart Grids Task Force of the European Commission Directorate-General for Energy, a member of the Cyber Security Expert Group, and ENCS liaison with several key European associations, which include European Distribution System Operators (E.DSO), the European Network of Transmission System Operators (ENTSO-E) and the European Utilities Telecom Council (EUTC).
You can’t just switch off a national grid when a major cyber security attack incident takes place... CSE: From the ENCS’s perspective, how well do European states compare with each other in regard to the cyber security readiness of their respective energy infrastructures? ANJOS NIJK: The diversity in culture, legislation and technology deployment in European nation states is reflected in security readiness of their energy infrastructures. This diversity provides the opportunity to identify and deploy the best practices. The NIS Directive introduces a degree of harmonisation by fostering a baseline security for operators of essential services, including Europe’s big energy grid operators. But other infrastructures like wind and solar farms
ANJOS NIJK, MANAGING DIRECTOR (ENCS) Anjos Nijk has been MD of the European Network for Cyber Security (ENCS) since February 2016. Prior to that he was the organsation’s COO. He presents regularly at power industry and security events.
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DETAILS For more information about the ENCS visit: | encs.eu
