Does Clean Energy Open New Digital Doors?

Abdullah Saeed Al Habsi (A.S. Alhebsi)

Writer and researcher specializing in security, heritage, risk management, and operations rooms

From a distance, wind turbines and solar panels look like familiar physical infrastructure. But the picture has changed. Many of these assets have become part of a digital ecosystem that can be monitored, maintained, and sometimes controlled from elsewhere. Therefore, the transition to clean energy does not just add new generation capacity; it also adds new digital doors.

Clean Energy: Infrastructure That Opens Digital Doors

This week, Dutch researchers, in cooperation with the Dutch National Cyber Security Centre, revealed thousands of wind and solar energy systems improperly exposed to the internet across 35 European countries. As reported by Reuters, interfaces appeared in some locations that may allow a level of operational control, including starting or stopping turbines.

The news is important, but what matters more to me is the question it leaves behind: Do we truly know the number of ways our physical assets can be accessed digitally?

Digital Transformation Does Not Mean Abandoning Renewable Energy

I do not view this as an argument against renewable energy or against connecting facilities to digital systems. Remote connectivity provides speed in maintenance and monitoring, reduces downtime, and allows specialists to understand faults before they arrive on-site.

The problem begins when ease of access and operational authority pass through the same digital door, without a clear separation between who can see and who can actually command the system.

Cybersecurity Is Part of Operational Readiness

In Egypt, where renewable energy projects are expanding and digital infrastructure is growing in importance, cybersecurity should not be viewed as a technical layer separate from operations.

A project may be engineered successfully and generate power efficiently, but part of its true readiness depends on knowing who can access its systems remotely and what they can do after entering.

The UAE’s experience in establishing environments to test technologies in real-world use cases offers a useful angle for dialogue here between two countries investing in smarter infrastructure.

Who Can Access? And What Authority Follows Entry?

For this reason, I suggest adding three simple operational questions to the usual cybersecurity inquiries:

Who can access? What authority is granted after access? And what physical impact could result from that authority?

These can be summarized in a pathway: access, then authority, then physical outcome.

An account that reads performance data is not like an account that can shut down equipment, even if both log into the same system.

Distributed Infrastructure: A Wider Protection Perimeter

This way of thinking becomes increasingly important with distributed infrastructure. A traditional plant gathers equipment, personnel, and controls within a relatively known scope, whereas new energy assets are spread across industrial sites, farms, rooftops, and remote areas.

This gives the system flexibility in generation, but it also spreads the protection perimeter with it. Every solar inverter, controller, vendor account, and remote maintenance path can become part of the facility’s operational boundaries.

Testing in the Real Environment

In the UAE, plans were announced on October 6 to develop a center of excellence for cyber resilience and trusted technologies, in partnership between the Cyber Security Council and SCC Middle East, with a clear focus on testing real-world use cases and understanding how to adopt technologies safely and at scale.

What catches my attention here is not the establishment of a new center in itself, but the idea of testing in the real environment before a technology transitions to wide adoption.

Security is not proven in a product’s product brochure, but at the moment the system is exposed to non-ideal conditions.

Practical Steps to Protect Facilities

Any facility can start with practical steps: taking inventory of operational interfaces accessible via the internet, closing what has no genuine need to remain exposed, separating viewing authority from command authority, tightening vendor access, and testing the operations room’s ability to revoke permissions quickly.

Most importantly, the organization should link every digital permission to its potential physical impact, so that all accounts and interfaces are not treated as equal.

Accuracy Is Better Than Exaggeration

I see no benefit in turning every vulnerability into a looming catastrophe story. What the researchers uncovered is serious enough without exaggeration.

Good security needs accuracy; constant exaggeration weakens attention, while underestimating digital access may lead an organization to discover too late that a convenient maintenance tool has become a path to operational authority.

From Clean Energy to Smart Infrastructure

The green transition will make infrastructure smarter and more connected, which is a natural and required evolution.

However, success will not be measured solely by the amount of energy we produce, but by how well we understand every new connection: why it exists, who uses it, where its authorization ends, and what could happen in the real world if it is misused.

Sources:

Reuters report on exposed European systems

Announcement by UAE Cyber Security Council and SCC Middle East

Published by Hany Sallam

Hany Sallam, Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Scientific Magazine Ahram
An independent Arabic science magazine operating since 2008, dedicated to simplifying science, technology, space, natural phenomena and scientific stories for Arabic readers. The magazine includes sections such as “Zodiac Group” and “Stories and Tales”, alongside science topics that combine knowledge with a spirit of discovery. It operates independently and is not affiliated with Al-Ahram Press Foundation or any governmental body.