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By Andy Bochman

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Here in the Northern hemisphere, where approximately 90% of readers reside, it's summer. In Europe (pre-financial crisis Europe, anyway), it's time to throttle back and head for the beach. In the U.S. and other parts of the world where long breaks are less common beach time remains, for most, a scarce commodity.

Certainly with record heat waves driving air conditioning use way up, energy workers need to be on their toes, not dipping their toes in ponds, lakes or oceans.

Because I subscribe to McKinsey & Company's Quarterly cyber security newsletter, I had the good fortune to come across this article:

If your company is reality based, and you've haven't been running practice breaches yet, now's a good time to start, and the McKinsey piece gives you a framework for getting started.

I won't pull any citations from it, though it's full of goodness. But rather, leave you with this sharp comment from a UK-based reader:

In this still-nascent area of corporate risk and reputational vulnerability, the understanding of precisely who has responsibility for what should the worst happen isn’t good enough. We need new governance structures to provide more robust ownership, and in the interest of all stakeholders (customers, staff, shareholders, suppliers, etc.), we need a better reporting framework to ensure that public confidence in our most important IT and network-reliant brands is maintained.

Ah yes, the need for better security governance and better structures. Nothing like an actual impactful data or systems breach, or the realistic trial of dealing with one, to show you you're not organized to deal with it the way you'd want to be.

Practice might not make perfect, but it can only serve to improve your understanding of the challenges, and may give you the fodder you've got to have to drive the changes you need.

Now, where's the suntan lotion?

Andy Bochman is author of the Smart Grid Security Blog and an Energy Security Lead for IBM's Rational division, where the focus is on securing the software that runs the smart grid. Andy is a contributor to industry and national security working groups on energy security and cyber security. He lives in Boston, is an active member of the MIT Energy Club, and is the founder of the Smart Grid Security and DOD Energy Blogs.