Cyberattack was likely ‘Russia-based threat actor’: Nova Scotia Power CEO

The CEO of Nova Scotia Power says an unidentified group based out of Russia is believed to have been behind a cyberattack earlier this year.

Peter Gregg made the comment at a legislative committee meeting on Tuesday, to which he had been summoned to answer questions around billing concerns from the utility’s customers.

“This incident was an unprecedented, sophisticated and targeted attack,” Gregg told MLAs on the committee. “Based on expert assessments and intelligence, there’s a high degree of confidence that the activity was associated with a Russia-based threat actor group.”

Gregg said the company has made investments in cybersecurity, but added that organizations around the world are facing these kinds of threats.

When it comes to concerns around billing, the company is planning to make things right for anyone found to have been overcharged, according to Gregg.

Opposition NDP Leader Claudia Chender asked Gregg and Chris Lanteigne, the director of customer care, why the company couldn’t bill customers the same amount as last year, rather than use an estimate.

“If you are not confident in your ability to estimate accurately, I don’t understand why the company wouldn’t just take last year’s use as a proxy.”

Lanteigne replied that their billing system simply could not do that.

Iain Rankin, a Liberal member of the committee, spoke about a constituent who had received a bill three times higher than the same period last year.

“If I’m right, there’s a lot of people being overcharged,” Rankin said, before asking what the utility would do with extra revenue that is accumulating interest.

Gregg flatly denied that the company would benefit from any overpayments, adding that the utility would audit its books to verify this.

“I don’t want anyone to think we’re just taking that money,” Gregg said. “If people have overpaid, we owe people back that money, and we will give them back that money.”

The attack has left Nova Scotia Power without the ability to remotely read smart meters on customers’ homes. Gregg says about 75 per cent of meters have now been physically read, meaning about 25 per cent of customers are receiving bills based on estimated power usage.

On the impact of that cyberattack, Gregg says changes have been made in connection to concerns raised in its aftermath.

“We no longer collect social insurance numbers, and we’re on track to complete their removal from our system by March 31,” Gregg said. “We are on track to reconnect customer meters with our billing system by the end of March.”

The CEO also said Nova Scotia Power was on track to catch up with outstanding payments to its suppliers by the end of the year.

With files from Emily Baron Cadloff, The Canadian Press.