London Daily

Focus on the big picture.
Tuesday, Oct 14, 2025

UK cyber security law forcing energy companies to report hacks has led to no reports, despite numerous hacks

UK cyber security law forcing energy companies to report hacks has led to no reports, despite numerous hacks

The threshold to determine whether an incident affecting energy companies is reportable has prevented any reports being made.

A cyber security law introduced three years ago was meant to boost the resilience of the UK's energy sector by obliging gas and electricity firms to report when they were hacked.

But since then not a single report has been made, Sky News can reveal, despite numerous successful hacks of British energy firms attributed to hostile states as well as criminal groups.

Ofgem, the authority that is meant to receive these reports, told Sky News that only one company has ever tried to file a report informing the regulator that it had been hacked, but they were dismissed as the incident did not meet the threshold for being reported.

Ofcom's incident thresholds are based on the impact of an attack on customers


Last year, staff at a little-known company called Elexon - a firm that plays a critical role in balancing and settling payments between power plants and electricity suppliers - was left locked out of its internal systems due to a ransomware attack.

The British government has confirmed that Russian state-sponsored hackers have successfully penetrated the computer networks of the UK's energy grids, without disrupting them.

Former defence secretary Gavin Williamson warned that "thousands and thousands and thousands" of people could be killed if an attempt at disruption was made.

But the high thresholds for companies working across the gas and electricity sectors to report cyber security incidents to Ofgem risks leaving the regulator blind to how the sector is actually coping in the face of these threats.

These thresholds are based on the impact of hacks to the continuity of the companies' services, a metric that does not record the sector's security capabilities, just the intentions of the attackers.

Dr Jamie Collier, a threat intelligence consultant at FireEye, told Sky News that the thresholds could be useful considering the varying levels of sophistication across attacks on critical infrastructure organisations, allowing defenders to "focus on what really matters".

But the cyber security expert added: "Despite this, essential service providers and regulators should be careful not to neglect the threat posed from less sophisticated attacks."

FireEye has detected an increase in critical infrastructure incidents caused by novice hackers due to the growing availability of tools enabling these hackers to interact with industrial control systems.

The company also warns that multiple, highly-prolific criminal organisations with a financial motivation are currently "active inside essential service provider networks with the intent of profiting from a ransom of stolen information and disrupted services".

FireEye warns that novice hackers are now targeting industrial control systems.


"Most of the concern around cyber security has been focused on operational technology (OT) networks that interact with physical processes and machinery, such as power plant equipment or water treatment facilities," Dr Collier explained.

"Yet the traditional information technology (IT) networks that involve the flow of data - such as file storage or email - should not be neglected. This is because whilst the impact of malicious activity can be far more severe against OT systems, these attacks typically start out on IT networks. It is therefore vital to consider security across an entire service provider's infrastructure."

Dr Collier stressed that critical infrastructure providers "deserve credit for their use of fail-safe mechanisms that can mitigate the destructive impacts of many attacks".

Responding to Sky News, a government spokesperson said: "The UK's critical infrastructure is extremely well protected and over the past five years we have invested £1.9bn in the National Cyber Security Strategy to ensure our systems remain secure and reliable."

They added that a formal review of the impact of the cyber security law, the Network & Information Systems Regulations, will take place within the next 12 months.

Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
EU Deploys New Biometric Entry/Exit System: What Non-EU Travelers Must Know
Australian Prime Minister’s Private Number Exposed Through AI Contact Scraper
Ex-Microsoft Engineer Confirms Famous Windows XP Key Was Leaked Corporate License, Not a Hack
China’s lesson for the US: it takes more than chips to win the AI race
Australia Faces Demographic Risk as Fertility Falls to Record Low
California County Reinstates Mask Mandate in Health Facilities as Respiratory Illness Risk Rises
Israel and Hamas Agree to First Phase of Trump-Brokered Gaza Truce, Hostages to Be Freed
French Political Turmoil Elevates Marine Le Pen as Rassemblement National Poised for Power
China Unveils Sweeping Rare Earth Export Controls to Shield ‘National Security’
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
France: Less Than a Month After His Appointment, the New French Prime Minister Resigns
Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán stated that Hungary will not adopt the euro because the European Union is falling apart.
Sarah Mullally Becomes First Woman Appointed Archbishop of Canterbury
Mayor in western Germany in intensive care after stabbing
Australian government pays Deloitte nearly half a million dollars for a report built on fabricated quotes, fake citations, and AI-generated nonsense.
US Prosecutors Gained Legal Approval to Hack Telegram Servers
Macron Faces Intensifying Pressure to Resign or Trigger New Elections Amid France’s Political Turmoil
Standard Chartered Names Roberto Hoornweg as Sole Head of Corporate & Investment Banking
UK Asylum Housing Firm Faces Backlash Over £187 Million Profits and Poor Living Conditions
UK Police Crack Major Gang in Smuggling of up to 40,000 Stolen Phones to China
BYD’s UK Sales Soar Nearly Nine-Fold, Making Britain Its Biggest Market Outside China
Trump Proposes Farm Bailout from Tariff Revenues Amid Backlash from Other Industries
FIFA Accuses Malaysia of Forging Citizenship Documents, Suspends Seven Footballers
Latvia to Bar Tourist and Occasional Buses to Russia and Belarus Until 2026
A Dollar Coin Featuring Trump’s Portrait Expected to Be Issued Next Year
Australia Orders X to Block Murder Videos, Citing Online Safety and Public Exposure
Three Scientists Awarded Nobel Prize in Medicine for Discovery of Immune Self-Tolerance Mechanism
OpenAI and AMD Forge Landmark AI-Chip Alliance with Equity Option
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
×