Forge Institute Awarded U.S. Department of Energy Funding to Launch the Secure Energy Defenders Program, a $2M program to Strengthen Cybersecurity for Arkansas Rural and Municipal Electric Utilities

Foreign adversaries are increasingly targeting the power grids, water systems, and local infrastructure communities rely on every day — not through traditional military means, but through cyberattacks aimed at systems that are often under-resourced and locally run. These threats are accelerating: artificial intelligence is lowering the barrier to entry for attackers, automating reconnaissance, and enabling more convincing social engineering at a scale and speed utilities have never had to defend against before. Rural and municipal electric utilities, which power much of Arkansas, are exactly this kind of target: critical to daily life, and rarely equipped with the same cybersecurity resources as major metropolitan utilities.