Turkey’s power grid opens tender to renew computer network after national blackout

Neşe Karanfil - ANKARA

The Turkish Electricity Transmission Company (TEİAŞ) has opened a tender to renew its computer network with the aim of preventing any reoccurrence of the national blackout which occurred on March 30. 

Willing to establish a safer computer network, TEİAŞ has prepared a detailed technical tender document to thwart any technical security breakage. It will be possible for companies to bid for the tender, which was opened by the State Supply Office (DMO), until Sept. 15. The details of the desired system were defined in 82 pages by the authority. 

The new system must be able “to cut any overloading from other countries, offering geographical protection,” according to the tender document. 

The new system is also expected to prevent any zero day attacks, which are used to define a time interval between the detection of a system weakness by a security expert or hacker and the amendment of this failure. The desired cyber products to thwart such defects will be located in the TEİAŞ data center. 

All database passwords will also be encrypted through eligible solutions after the system revision, according to the tender document. 

The outage, which hit almost all of Turkey’s 81 provinces, was triggered after shutdowns at two power plants in İzmir and Adana Çukurova.

Around 70 million people were hit by the outage, which halted transport networks and shut down offices for several hours, including in Turkey’s capital, Ankara, and largest city, Istanbul.