Modern Cyber Threats in the EU Energy Sector

The energy sector, especially within the EU’s renewables and utilities ecosystem, is going through very exciting times as we speak. Digital transformation is driving operations in both B2B and B2C businesses, but it’s also exposing these systems to cyber threats. Whilst certain regulated industries like banking have had decades to tune their infrastructure, other industries need to balance becoming resilient within a relatively short space of time with powering homes, industries, and infrastructure.

To help navigate some of these challenges, below we walk through 3 core risk areas impacting EU energy organisations in 2026, describe their implications, and share a few options on how to approach de-risking these areas. We hope you find this useful, from the hand of your critical cybersecurity friend!

1. The Strategic Threat of Ransomware

One would expect that the age of ransomware has come and gone, but far from it. Ransomware remains one of the most disruptive cyber risks for energy firms across Europe. Attackers encrypt data and systems, often targeting both IT and operational technology (OT), and then demand payment to restore access. 

Beyond financial loss, the impact can spread much wider. In 2021, the global Colonial Pipeline attack underscored how ransomware against critical infrastructure can trigger broad economic and operational impacts. While this incident happened outside the EU, it sent ripples across European energy markets, prompting regulators and operators to look at their defences once more.

From a cybersecurity point of view, we understand how challenging it is to secure systems:

• OT environments are historically difficult to secure, and often remain vulnerable despite being patched, as their software components rely on older, stable libraries and components.

• Incident response planning, particularly under the demands of NIS2 remain challenging, and may be inconsistent across functions.

• Reliance on sole providers of a technology or solution in the supply chain increases risk and complexity of mitigation. 

The NIS2 Directive and upcoming Critical Entities Resilience (CER) Act mandate stronger cybersecurity postures and incident reporting for energy sector operators. These frameworks emphasise preparedness and response capability, and will no doubt play a key role in improving cyber resilience within Europe.

Some of the areas we work on with our customers:

• Incident response exercise: We facilitate and manage regular exercises that include ransomware scenarios with both management and operational teams.

• Threat intelligence and managed detection: we leverage our industry experience to support technology and supplier selection, and work with our clients to find the right endpoint detection and response (EDR) service or solution.

• Policy and playbooks: We offer ready-to-use playbooks with clear escalation pathways that include legal, PR, and regulator notification steps under NIS2, and are also happy to help with tailoring compliance policies.

2. The Weak Link in the Chain

Your cyber posture is only as strong as your supplier ecosystem. Compromise of an equipment vendor, software provider, or managed services partner can introduce risk directly into your operational environment, often without this being obvious until it’s too late.

We all remember the SolarWinds incident in 2020, which demonstrated how attackers can embed malicious code into widely used software, affecting countless organisations across a number of sectors. In energy, where specialised platforms and custom integrations are often used, similar risks may be present.

Many third-party components lack transparent development or security assurance processes. This is a known, historical issue, which can be exacerbated by lack of robust cyber risk management instruments in supplier contracts. It may be strange to read this, but remediation SLAs ie ensuring a patch is developed in response to a published critical vulnerability in software components, simply wasn't part of the evaluation criteria for suppliers in the past, and therefore these SLAs and vehicles often make it more difficult for operators to get access to software updates. P

Here's how we have been helping our customers overcome these challenges:

• Supplier risk assessments: we help implement security baselines through risk scoring, security attestations and regular vendor assessments.

• Contractual safeguards: we advise on expanding the language of contracts to include clear cybersecurity requirements, SLAs, and audit rights.

• Procurement process: We supplement the skillset of the procurement team with technical competencies to gain visibility into supplier risk and enable them to make more informed decisions.

3. Cutting-Edge Tech & AI

Where there's risk, there is also opportunity. AI, machine learning, and advanced automation promise enormous gains in predictive maintenance, grid optimisation, and threat detection. Yet, without careful guardrails, they also introduce new attack vectors, adversarial inputs, or unexpected behaviour in systems and workflows.

There is no need to over-egg this, some of the main exposures from the use of this technology coincide with the challenges many other sectors and verticals experience. This can be a good thing, as it is often easier to learn from what worked in other industries and implement the right security safeguards.

Here are some of the prominent risks we are being asked about all the time:

AI models may "remember" information uploaded into them, and it can be concerning to see a policy or procurement document intended for internal use echoed back by the friendly LLM prompt. 

Many advanced AI systems operate as “black boxes,” making it difficult to understand why a decision was made, which makes auditability of decisions challenging, often resulting in quite limited audit outcomes.

Attackers are increasingly experimenting with ways to manipulate AI behaviour directly. We have seen the rise of good old steganography techniques (hiding instructions into non-visible areas of input) in training data and other inputs, which means we should treat AI-enabled workflows as an extension of the cybersecurity perimeter.

The EU AI Act categorises AI systems by risk and requires transparency, robustness, and human oversight for high-risk applications, which include critical infrastructure controls. Much of the practical implementation of this is yet to be seen.

AI has been a hot topic, and here are just a few ways we have been helping our customers:

• Skills gaps and governance: AI adoption often outpaces internal capability. We have been acting as AI risk advisors and  virtual CISOs to support decision-making and manage risk

• Technical resource maturity: we've worked with engineering and operational teams to increase their awareness and mature their understanding of AI and LLM models through structured training programmes

• Penetration Testing: systems that have integrated decision-making capabilities require testing, just like any traditional software solution, and we have been supporting these requirements within our customer base

Final thoughts

Digital transformation and adoption of AI in energy is accelerating, and so is the associated threat landscape. The good news is that most of the challenges associated with this expansion are addressable through well-known approaches like risk management, thoughtful adoption of new technologies, and alignment to EU cybersecurity frameworks like NIS2.

If you’re looking for support with incident readiness, supply chain management or adoption of new technologies (not limited to AI), reach out to us at 45 Cyber Labs. Drop us a message, and let's have a coffee to share experiences.