The Top Cyber Threats to Energy & Utilities in 2025—And How to Stay Ahead
Editor’s Note: This article is part of our RSA Conference 2025 content series, spotlighting mission-critical challenges facing today’s cybersecurity and infrastructure leaders. We’ll be on-site at RSAC 2025 and invite you to connect with us to learn how secure collaboration can empower your frontline teams.
When power grids go dark, water stops flowing, or communication networks crash, it’s not just a technology failure — it’s a community-wide crisis.
As we move deeper into 2025, energy providers, utilities, and infrastructure operators are facing an increasingly volatile threat landscape. Cyberattacks on these sectors aren’t just increasing in frequency — they’re becoming more sophisticated, coordinated, and damaging.
And the truth is — in many cases — the attackers are moving faster than the defenders.
Cybersecurity: The Stakes Are Higher Than Ever
In 2023, a ransomware attack on the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa in Pennsylvania made national headlines when hackers breached an industrial control system used to manage water pressure for thousands of residents.
Attacks like this underscore a sobering reality: Essential services — from water treatment to energy distribution to telecommunications — are increasingly in the crosshairs of both cybercriminals and nation-state actors. In fact, cyberattacks on U.S. utility companies increased nearly 70% from 2023 to 2024.
Making matters worse, as attacks become more common, they’re also becoming more expensive; IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report found that the average attack set organizations back $4.88 million, a 10% uptick from the previous year.
As IT and operational technology (OT) systems continue to converge, new vulnerabilities are emerging at every junction. Increasingly, legacy hardware is being paired with modern software, often introducing unforeseen security risks; air-gapped systems that were typically isolated are now being connected to external networks, further expanding the attack surface.
Unfortunately, many operators still rely on outdated communications methods — like email, unencrypted chat, and siloed dispatch tools. As a result, incident response slows down precisely when speed and coordination matters most.
Attackers know this. And they’re exploiting it.
The 3 Biggest Threats Facing Energy & Utilities in 2025
Energy and utility companies face an evolving threat landscape as cyberattacks grow more sophisticated and interconnected systems introduce new vulnerabilities.
As we move further into 2025, critical infrastructure organizations must be ready to address three key threats that pose significant risks to resilience, security, and operational continuity.
1. Ransomware & Nation-State Attacks
Sophisticated threat actors — both criminal and state-sponsored — are targeting control systems, SCADA environments, and supply-side energy networks. These attackers aren’t only interested in money; they want disruption, leverage, and power.
In 2021, hackers executed a ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which delivers 45% of the fuel supply for the U.S. East Coast, causing panic buying, fuel shortages, and massive economic impact; the pipeline provider itself had to pay $5 million in ransom to resume operations.
Since then, similar attacks have emerged globally, with increased attempts to access grid management systems and manipulate energy distribution.
2. Supply Chain Vulnerabilities
Energy and utility networks are deeply interconnected, often relying on numerous third-party vendors and service providers. Each one introduces potential entry points for hackers looking to attack software supply chains.
According to research from Cybersecurity Ventures, the annual cost of software supply chain attacks will reach a massive $138 billion by 2031, up from the $60 billion price tag such attacks are expected to carry in 2025. This year, Gartner expects 45% of organizations will experience a software supply chain attack, a 3x increase from 2021.
In the context of energy and utilities, this means that hackers have more opportunities to exploit insecure vendor access, outdated authentication practices, and other vulnerabilities.
3. Insider Threats & Misconfigurations
Not all threats are external. In a sector defined by complex processes and distributed operations, accidental misconfigurations — or intentional insider activity — can have devastating effects.
Simple mistakes — like shared credentials or improperly configured firewalls — have led to significant outages. Since many teams lack a secure, auditable collaboration space where these risks can be quickly detected and addressed, such threats often lead to increased downtime, frustrated customers, and potential penalties.
What Security Leaders Can Do Right Now
The challenge isn’t just defending against threats. It’s responding swiftly when they strike.
Energy and utility providers need to shift from fragmented, reactive communications to real-time, structured coordination. This means enabling cyber, IT, and OT teams to collaborate securely — across organizational and geographic lines — when every second counts.
Real-Time Collaboration
Major events require structured, persistent channels where teams can escalate, track, and resolve incidents rapidly. When the stakes are highest, critical infrastructure teams simply can’t afford to rely on email or off-the-shelf chat tools that weren’t designed for high-stakes coordination.
Many teams struggle to communicate effectively during incident response, which leads to delays, confusion, and poor coordination across teams. By implementing a secure collaboration platform purpose-built for mission-critical use cases, some teams have been able to respond to incidents as much as 90% faster.
Structured Workflows for Crisis Management
Collaboration isn’t just about communication — it’s about orchestration, too. Pre-built response channels, role-based access, and real-time file sharing help maintain clarity and focus during chaos, which further accelerates response and resolution.
When every minute matters, the ability to act with control and confidence becomes a strategic advantage.
Resilience Starts with Communication
Cyber resilience doesn’t begin with firewalls. It begins with the people managing them and their ability to work together as a team.
Energy and utility teams don’t just need alerts; they need actionable workflows that help them protect millions of lives and livelihoods.
When traditional communication systems failed during the Rogers Communications outage in Canada, frontline teams struggled to coordinate a response across dozens of affected sectors — from emergency services to transportation and banking. The impact was far-reaching, and it revealed what we already know: In a crisis, communication is everything.
At Mattermost, we help teams build secure, resilient, and compliant collaboration environments that adapt to their mission — even when the network is unstable and the stakes are highest.
Want to See It in Action?
We’ll be at RSA Conference 2025, meeting with cybersecurity leaders and showcasing how secure collaboration is evolving to meet today’s mission-critical challenges.
If you’ll be there, please stop by our booth to say hello, see Mattermost in action, and learn how you can build a more resilient organization with secure collaboration at its core.
Protect Your Critical Infrastructure—Learn More
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