Plexigrid warns EU grids compromised

1/ Alberto Méndez Rebollo, chief executive of grid software company Plexigrid, said Europe’s electricity grids are “already compromised” and exposed to cyberattacks, adding that “nobody has pushed the button” yet, according to Montel’s June 4 report. (montelnews.com) 2/ The warning landed a day after the European Commission published a Strategic Roadmap for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence in energy on June 3, saying Europe’s energy system is becoming more dependent on digital technologies as high prices and geopolitical pressures persist. (energy.ec.europa.eu) 3/ The Commission said the roadmap is part of its Technology Sovereignty Package and is meant to support a “sustainable, secure, resilient and competitive” energy system. The package ties digitalisation directly to energy security and industrial competitiveness. (energy.ec.europa.eu) 4/ A second Brussels move the same day broadened that security frame beyond power networks. The Commission adopted OceanEye, a €92 million ocean-observation initiative aimed at making the EU a leading provider of ocean intelligence and securing 35% of the market for ocean observation technologies by 2035. (cyprus.representation.ec.europa.eu) 5/ Euronews said OceanEye is also pitched as a way to protect critical infrastructure against “malicious actors” using grey-zone tactics. That matters because subsea cables, offshore assets and maritime routes sit inside the same resilience conversation as grids and telecoms. (euronews.com) 6/ Taken together, the two EU announcements and Plexigrid’s warning point to the same operational problem: the energy transition is increasing the number of digital control points inside essential infrastructure. More sensors, software, remote management and data exchange can improve efficiency, but they also widen the attack surface. (energy.ec.europa.eu) 7/ The Commission’s own energy digitalisation materials say the goal is a market for digital energy services that is sustainable, cybersecure, transparent and competitive, while protecting data privacy and sovereignty. That language shows Brussels is treating cyber risk as part of system design, not only compliance. (energy.ec.europa.eu) 8/ In practice, that usually means architecture questions before product questions: how operational networks are segmented from enterprise IT, how much third-party access vendors hold, where identity and key management sit, and whether abnormal control-plane activity can be detected fast enough to contain it. This is an inference from the Commission’s security framing and the grid warning, not a direct quote. (montelnews.com) 9/ The timing is notable because EU institutions are pairing industrial policy with infrastructure hardening. The digital-energy roadmap sits inside a broader sovereignty push, while OceanEye extends that logic to maritime awareness and infrastructure protection. (energy.ec.europa.eu) 10/ The next concrete step is in the Commission’s published materials: implementation of the June 3 digital-energy roadmap and the rollout of OceanEye toward its 2035 targets. Plexigrid’s warning adds urgency, but the official EU documents show where the policy machinery is now moving. (energy.ec.europa.eu)