Tecnical review

The present document is the result of a technical review of challenges specific to Black Sea regulators, as well as current international studies and best practices on the topic of cybersecurity and prudence, all of which form the basis of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)-National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners (NARUC) cybersecurity tariff guidelines: Evaluating the Prudency of Cybersecurity Investments: Guidelines for Energy Regulators (Ragazzi et al. 2019). The document is structured as follows: the first part includes four chapters, one for each Black Sea country included in this study, depicting the main features and challenges of their power systems and of their regulatory frameworks. The second part includes a review with commentary of the main sources of information on the topics of the guidelines. Specifically, Part 1 of this report has been prepared on the basis of documents issued by international institutions, information freely available on the web, the laws and regulatory documents of each country, and interviews with regulators. Every country chapter includes a preliminary picture of the local power system and a presentation of the actors in the system. Then the main features of the regulatory framework are described. Finally, more detailed information on the processes adopted in each country for tariff setting and for investment approval is presented. In conclusion, the main challenges facing the country are summarized and conclusions and recommendations are given. Part 2 is organized around four topics plus one: cyber cost identification, cost benchmarking, performance metrics, and network development plans--which follow the structure of the tariff guidelines--followed by a supplementary general discussion of publications on cybersecurity in the electric power sector (intended to complement the reference lists with some relevant general references). The documents reviewed are essentially of two types. A first set of documents comprises reports issued either by public bodies in Europe and the United States or by private associations such as sector associations. A second set of documents is composed of peer-reviewed scientific papers, working papers, or conference presentations. The documents, apart from a few cases, have been limited to material published after 2012 due to the rapid evolution of the sector. In the Appendix, a summary table gives basic information for all the reviewed documents and explains their points of interest, providing a reference for future consultation. For each document, the review presents the following data: title, author(s) or publishing body, type of document (e.g., journal article, presentation, report), source (journal or book in case of selected material), web address of the document, and a short description of the contents.