Sergey Stelmakh | 08/11/2021
Wildfires have devastated ground infrastructure in many countries. Businesses should learn from this and consider whether to spend on security risks like technical debt or invest in cyber defenses, writes Miles Suer, Alation's chief marketing officer and #CIOChat coordinator, on eWEEK .
Wildfire season is a fact of life in California. But man-made fires (not arson) are a different matter, and they certainly have far more serious consequences. A few years ago, before COVID-19, I was in el salvador mobile database for an event on enterprise architecture. By coincidence, I found myself at a table with the heads of Germany’s largest utility companies. I asked them a simple question: Why are the electrical lines in my area underground, while the main transmission lines are all above ground?
As far as I know, underground cables rust easily and have other technical problems related to soil moisture. The managers looked at me dumbfounded and said that in Germany they have been burying cables for many years. Then I asked them another question. How efficient is your power system? In the US, the grid efficiency is about 33%. This means that only a third of the electricity transmitted through the wires actually reaches the consumer. Most of the generated energy is simply lost! They looked at me again in bewilderment, because their losses are incomparably smaller: the efficiency of transmitting electricity generated by wind turbines in the North Sea via high-voltage direct current lines to Munich reaches 95%. The losses are only 5%!
Do businesses need to change their approach to accounting for business risks?
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