Expert Interview: Sean Peisert on Cybersecurity Research

Why It Matters

The work safeguards critical national infrastructure while unlocking secure data sharing for scientific breakthroughs, creating commercial opportunities and strengthening overall cyber‑resilience.

Key Takeaways

• Berkeley Lab secures scientific instruments and networked research infrastructure.
• Physics‑based intrusion detection monitors power grid behavior via electrical laws.
• Differential privacy enables utilities to share data without exposing vulnerabilities.
• Trusted execution environments protect sensitive scientific and nuclear data analyses.
• Industry partnership aims to commercialize privacy‑preserving grid cyber‑security services.

Summary

In a recent interview, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s computer‑security lead Sean Peisert outlined the lab’s multi‑disciplinary cyber‑security program, which spans scientific instrumentation, high‑performance computing, the power grid and nuclear safeguards.

Peisert emphasized a physics‑based intrusion‑detection approach for energy delivery systems, using voltage, current and phase‑angle measurements to flag misbehaving devices regardless of whether they are compromised. He also described efforts to secure the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, detecting unauthorized workloads and protecting open‑science data.

He highlighted the development of differential‑privacy tools that let utilities share grid data without exposing vulnerabilities or household usage patterns, and the creation of trusted execution environments tailored for scientific and nuclear data. “Cyber security is meaningless in the abstract; it must enable something,” he said, noting the lab’s first‑at‑scale physics‑based detection and its partnership with an industry player to commercialize the service.

If adopted widely, these technologies could harden the nation’s power infrastructure, accelerate collaborative scientific research, and open new markets for privacy‑preserving cyber‑security solutions, reinforcing Berkeley Lab’s reputation for long‑term, innovative defense strategies.

Original Description

Cybersecurity is essential to protecting the data, infrastructure, and technologies behind modern science and society. At the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab), Sean Peisert leads efforts to secure everything from supercomputers to the power grid. Using innovative approaches like physics-based monitoring and privacy-preserving data analysis, his team’s work positions cybersecurity not just as a defense, but as a tool for enabling collaboration and progress.

Featuring:

Sean Peisert, lead of cybersecurity and privacy research and development at Berkeley Lab. He is a senior scientist in the lab’s Scientific Data Division, part of the Computing Sciences Area. He is also an adjunct professor at the University of California, Davis, and the director of Trusted CI, the National Science Foundation’s Cybersecurity Center of Excellence.

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