Cyberspies have penetrated the U.S. electrical grid and left behind software programs that could be used to disrupt the system, according to current and former national-security officials.

America's critical transportation, power, and communications systems remain quite vulnerable and lack funds to remedy that.

The author argues that the western world's reliance on a "weak and dilapidated energy and communications network infrastructures" is a recipe for disaster.

Nano-based sensors and nano-engineered materials could transform the power grid, according to experts speaking at a symposium on energy and nanotechnology.

The revelation that a computer worm disabled a safety system in a US nuclear power station in January has led to fresh calls for security on electricity grids to be overhauled. Experts say much of the grid's critical infrastructure is too accessible to the virus-ridden public internet.

While energy experts differed on the precise cause of today's power blackout, they were in agreement that the extensive failure betrayed the age of the region's transmission system and its struggles to keep up with demand.

Fred Kaplan argues that the recent blackout in the U.S. clearly indicates a problem with the archaic energy grid but it also reveals "the system's?and society's?resilience" to terrorist attack.

Jeremy Rifkin proposes setting up a decentralized energy system, similar to the internet, to reduce vulnerability to blackouts.

The growing reliance of the electric power industry on information technologies introduces a new class of cyber vulnerability. The principal challenge is to determine how best to counter cyber threats posed by malicious elements, be they terrorists bent on destruction, vandals hacking their way into control or data exchange systems, or even commercial competitors, stealing their adversaries' data or sabotaging their operations.

Even before the recent blackout in Northeast U.S., spending on generators and solar power plants capable of providing all home power was on the rise.