The Rural and Municipal Utility Cybersecurity (RMUC) Program’s ACT 1 Prize is designed to empower utilities to make investments in staff training, governance processes, and cyber technologies.
Donor Name: U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Prize
Deadline: 11/30/2023
Size of the Grant: up to $8.96 million
Details:
ACT 1 cash prizes will be available to eligible utilities to incentivize meaningful, impactful investments in cybersecurity technologies and support training to increase the knowledge, skills, and abilities of utility staff. Successful competitors to this prize competition will propose and complete work implementing solutions that address cybersecurity risks. In partnership with qualified cybersecurity TA providers, ACT 1 prize winners will:
- Develop network architectures of their digital systems to identify and prioritize where interventions might be most effective
- Assess current cybersecurity technical stacks for gaps, duplication of functions, and opportunities to fully utilize existing capabilities
- Create cybersecurity plans and roadmaps to improve their cybersecurity posture
- Identify solutions that can be operated and maintained by existing staff and budgets
- Develop budgets, cost projections, and purchasing plans to minimize third-party risks when selecting solutions
- Implement solutions
- Develop and implement processes to ensure solutions are installed securely and perform as intended.
The ACT 1 Prize Program has three consecutive phases:
- Phase 1. Commitment: utilities describe their resources, need for improving their cybersecurity posture, and commitment to participating in the ACT 1 Prize Program.
- Phase 2. Planning: utilities work with TA providers to: complete technical assessments of their systems; identify areas where training would improve staff skills and abilities; gain a better understanding of potential risks and solutions; identify solutions to address prioritized risks; and draft a roadmap for implementation.
- Phase 3. Implementation: utilities make substantial progress toward completing their roadmap
Prizes
The ACT 1 Prize offers a total prize pool of up to $8.96 million in cash and technical assistance across three increasingly competitive phases—Commitment, Planning, and Implementation—where each phase concludes with a prize award.
- Commitment Phase: Utilities prepare submission packages that describe their resources, need for improving their cybersecurity posture, and commitment to participating in the ACT 1 Prize.
- Planning Phase: Utilities work with technical assistance providers to complete system assessments, identify areas for training, understand potential risks and solutions, and draft a roadmap for implementation.
- Implementation Phase: Utilities work with technical assistance providers to make progress toward completing their implementation roadmap.
Eligibility Criteria
The ACT 1 Prize Program competition is open only to eligible utilities as defined in the RMUC Program’s authorizing legislation. The following entities are eligible to compete in the ACT 1 Prize Program:
- Rural electric cooperatives
- Utilities owned by a political subdivision of a state, such as a municipally owned electric utility
- Utilities owned by any agency, authority, corporation, or instrumentality of one or more political subdivisions of a state
- Investor-owned electric utilities that sell less than 4,000,000 megawatt hours of electricity per year.
For more information, visit USDOE.
