{"id":196838,"date":"2026-03-17T18:23:00","date_gmt":"2026-03-17T22:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/energys-cyber-unit-eyes-new-strategic-plan\/"},"modified":"2026-03-17T18:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-17T22:40:12","slug":"energys-cyber-unit-eyes-new-strategic-plan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/03\/17\/energys-cyber-unit-eyes-new-strategic-plan\/","title":{"rendered":"Energy\u2019s cyber unit eyes new strategic plan"},"content":{"rendered":"

Energy\u2019s cyber unit eyes new strategic plan<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/cybersecurity\/2026\/03\/energys-cyber-unit-eyes-new-strategic-plan\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-03-17 18:23:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: federalnewsnetwork.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points. <\/p>\n

The Energy Department\u2019s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response plans to lay out its first strategic plan, following on the heels of the Trump administration\u2019s new national cybersecurity strategy.
\nAlex Fitzsimmons, director of the CESER office, said the new strategic plan will be out soon.
\n\u201cCESER has been around for six years, [since the] first Trump administration,\u201d Fitzsimmons said during a Tuesday event in Washington hosted by Auburn University\u2019s McCrary Institute. \u201cHas never had a strategic plan clearly written down, explaining what the mission is, what the goals, objectives, key performance indicators are that we\u2019re all striving to achieve. Definitely helps that we have a new national cyber strategy.\u201d
\nThe CESER office is responsible for overseeing what\u2019s considered one of the most important U.S. critical infrastructure sectors in energy. The Trump administration\u2019s national cyber strategy, released earlier this month, includes a focus on securing critical infrastructure.]]><\/p>\n

Fitzsimmons noted 80% of the energy sector is owned or operated by the private sector.
\n\u201cA lot of those organizations are well resourced, but a lot of them are not,\u201d he said. \u201cThey might have one person working on [operational technology] or IT, not even a dedicated cyber person, but they\u2019re expected to defend their networks against nation state threat actors.\u201d
\nHe said CESER\u2019s \u201cfundamental\u201d mission is getting critical security information to those in the energy sector.
\n\u201cWe have to be able to get timely and actionable information out to them so that they can secure their networks,\u201d Fitzsimmons said.
\nOT security has also been a major focus for CESER. Fitzsimmons pointed to OT security training and exercise programs run through the office as key to securing the energy sector.
\n\u201cHardening is as much about people and process as it is technology,\u201d he said. \u201cSo it\u2019s great to see the cyber strategy, and we are fast at work at DOE, trying to implement many of those pillars.\u201d
\nTech pilots
\nWhite House National Cyber Director Sean Cairncross, also speaking at the McCrary Institute event, again teased out technology pilots that will be forthcoming as part of the cyber strategy.]]><\/p>\n

Cairncross said his office is working with the Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration to \u201covercome procurement hurdles\u201d and deploy new cyber technologies.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re going to utilize the federal government\u2019s authorities and testing capabilities, including working with the national labs to red team new technology and get it deployed at relevant speed,\u201d he said.
\nThe White House will use pilots in some critical infrastructure sectors as well, Cairncross added. He said the focus would be on sectors \u201cthat get less attention,\u201d like water utilities and rural hospitals.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re going to go to specific states and localities, test drive new technologies, work with our industry partners, our state government partners, really engage the state and local partnerships on this front and try to drive the capabilities and the technology level up and the cost down,\u201d he said. \u201cWhere we find success, we\u2019re going to scale.\u201d
\nAI acceleration
\nMeanwhile, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is considering how artificial intelligence-driven cyber attacks might warrant updates to the longstanding approach to cyber vulnerability management.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s really reducing that window that we\u2019re seeing where perhaps people had a week to two weeks to be able to address published CVEs to appropriately mitigate it with the patch, or to have some other sort of risk mitigation measure into place,\u201d Nick Andersen, CISA\u2019s acting director, said during the McCrary event. \u201cI just don\u2019t think that\u2019s the case anymore\u201d
\nCISA sponsors the widely used Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) Program, while it directly manages the Known Exploited Vulnerabilities (KEV) database, which includes vulnerabilities that federal agencies are required to address within set timeframes.
\n\u201cWe\u2019re looking at what are the new objectives that we should have for being able to get to a specific measure of what is the timeline associated with how we can prescribe action, whether it\u2019s an entry into the CVE or is an entry that we\u2019ve moved into KEV,\u201d Andersen said.
\nChris Butera, acting executive assistant director for cybersecurity at CISA, also discussed vulnerability management and updates to the KEV program during an earlier panel at the McCrary event.]]><\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re continuing to do refinements around that program, but we have to add more ways to do automation in this space and continuously move as fast as the adversary is going,\u201d Butera said. \u201cHow we address this at scale is really developing more secure software. And so we think there\u2019s a lot of opportunities here and potential challenges with AI being used for software development. So trying to do more and ensuring that we have more secure software and less of that vulnerability space for the adversary to be playing in every day.\u201d
\n Copyright
\n \u00a9\u00a02026 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Energy\u2019s cyber unit eyes new strategic plan https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/cybersecurity\/2026\/03\/energys-cyber-unit-eyes-new-strategic-plan\/ Publish Date: 2026-03-17 18:23:00 Source Domain: federalnewsnetwork.com…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":196839,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/federalnewsnetwork.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/GettyImages-1264709972-e1740690465825.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[26,20,24,27],"class_list":["post-196838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-cybersecurity","tag-vulnerability"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196838"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=196838"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196838\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":196840,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/196838\/revisions\/196840"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/196839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=196838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=196838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=196838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}