Across the world’s electricity grids, Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) have become indispensable tools for balancing intermittent renewables, providing reserve capacity, and bolstering grid resilience. In Texas’s ERCOT market, storage now supplies over 87% of certain frequency response services; this fast response helps prevent blackouts, avoid voltage sags, and smooth out grid disturbances that would otherwise impact service reliability (NERC Long Term Reliability Assessment). In Australia’s National Electricity Market, the development pipeline of standalone BESS grew 86 % year‑on‑year as of March 2025, eclipsing every other new‐build technology class (Energy Storage News, Australian Energy Market Operator).
Also Read: Cloud Strategy 2025: Repatriation Rises, Sustainability Matures, and Cost Management Tops Priorities
Fast‑acting, inverter‑based batteries soak up over‑generation, deliver milliseconds‑level frequency response, and defer expensive peaking generation assets. However, with great utility and opportunity comes a great responsibility for building secure systems. As grids lean more heavily on digitally controlled inverter-based resources that function best in a connected smart grid ecosystem, the attack surface of these grids increases.
Addressing this expanded attack surface requires owners, operators, regulators, and Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to work together to ensure robust cybersecurity capabilities are integrated into these solutions. Cybersecurity controls that focus only on one part of the stack may allow an attack to impact other systems because of the dependencies in our modern ecosystem. Ransomware attacks, which are often delivered through emails, are still the most prevalent and damaging cyber threat across industries. Although ransomware attacks don’t often impact Operational Technology (OT) systems directly, there are numerous examples of IT attacks impacting operations. For BESS operators, understanding and addressing cybersecurity risks across the full IT and OT stack is fundamental to delivering on the very promises that make batteries attractive in the first place.
A Convergence, for Better or Worse
The once-clear boundary between IT systems (offices, enterprise software, cloud services) and OT systems (plant controllers, battery management systems, power inverters) has all but dissolved. Utilities now pull SCADA and BESS telemetry into cloud-based analytics engines to optimize dispatch, predict maintenance needs, and monetize grid services.
This convergence delivers clear benefits. It flattens latency, improves visibility, and enables more dynamic grid participation. But it also blurs lines of accountability. A phishing email that compromises a corporate account can, directly or indirectly, provide attackers with a foothold into plant networks, especially when remote access or VPN configurations are weak. Indeed, the 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report identifies ransomware as a top risk across 92% of sectors, with most breaches still entering through the inbox.
Standards and Regulations Are Catching Up, But Slowly
North America’s grid operators and asset owners have participated in an evolving regulatory landscape with the North American Electric Reliability Corporation (NERC) that includes Critical Infrastructure Protection (CIP) cybersecurity requirements. The NERC CIP requirements have been prominently applied to larger generation sites (nameplate 1000 MVAR or greater), Central Centers, and large transmission assets. However, as the grid evolves, so do the requirements, with the expansion of applicability of requirements to smaller generation sites with the newer versions of the CIP-003 Security Management Controls standard. NERC is also expanding Inverter-Based Resources (IBR) registration requirements to address concerns about grid stability. Similar moves are underway in Europe under the EU Network Code on Cybersecurity and Network and Information Security Directive (NIS2), as well as in Australia under AEMO’s guidance on cybersecure SCADA and Australian Energy Sector Cyber Security Framework (AESCSF).
In practice, compliance requires that operators secure not only their network perimeters but also their vendors. Battery inverters, Power Conversion Systems (PCS), and Battery Management System (BMS) hardware increasingly come from international supply chains. A single compromised control module or back-doored device can undermine even the most robust local network architecture. The Idaho National Laboratory’s procurement guidance for BESS urges asset owners to demand signed firmware, serial traceability, tamper-evident shipping, and detailed chain-of-custody records for critical components. Supply-chain vigilance has become the first line of defense.
Also Read: The Deepfake Dilemma: How Synthetic Media is Eroding Trust in the Enterprise
Building a Secure BESS Operation
So, what does best practice look like for battery storage providers? It starts with design and the supply chain. Security must be built into products and projects early in the lifecycle, not bolted on later during SAT. This means security is applied at all levels, from the battery controller’s software development to hardware testing, network design, data flow, and operations. Each layer supports the overall secure design and ensures a defense-in-depth approach.
Maintaining these systems over the long term requires that identity and access controls are equally critical. Vendors and remote operators should use multifactor authentication and follow the least privileged model that only grants them access for their specific role. System visibility matters too. Maintaining a real-time inventory of every inverter, BMS, and control gateway—and feeding this data into enterprise vulnerability and configuration management tools—allows operators to detect anomalies early.
Importantly, cybersecurity must span both OT and IT realms. Passive sensors on the OT side should feed syslog and telemetry into a converged Security Information and Event Management System (SIEM) where alerts can be correlated with corporate endpoint detection, threat intelligence, and automated playbooks. When an event does happen, response teams should have the visibility and capabilities to respond across the environment. Response and recovery planning needs to be tested regularly, with scenarios addressing not only business continuity but physical consequences: a loss of communications should trigger a fail-safe, charge-neutral operating state, not a catastrophic thermal event.
Defending Against the Ordinary—and the Catastrophic
Perhaps the most sobering lesson is that ransomware, the most pedestrian of cyber threats, remains the most likely disruptor. Advanced grid attacks are possible and worth defending against, but in the near term, it is phishing emails, misconfigured access, and unpatched software that pose the most significant risk. No amount of OT hardening can compensate if an organization’s corporate IT is porous and there are unknown dependencies between IT and OT systems.
Batteries and the Battle for Trust
BESS has the potential to make grids cleaner, faster, and more resilient. But the same cyber-physical pathways that unlock those benefits can, if left unguarded, become routes to disruption. By uniting strong IT and OT defenses, demanding integrity across supply chains, and addressing cyber risks at their entry points, OEMS, integrators, and storage operators can ensure that batteries achieve their potential for grid stability and performance.
