Chesapeake Utilities Corporation operates critical energy infrastructure across Delaware, Maryland, Florida, and adjacent states, distributing natural gas, electricity, and propane to hundreds of thousands of residential and industrial customers. Founded in 1859 and publicly traded on NYSE under ticker CPK, the company runs a diversified portfolio through subsidiaries including Florida Public Utilities, Eastern Shore Natural Gas, Sharp Energy, and Aspire Energy. The threat surface spans physical infrastructure - field technicians checking meters, control room operators monitoring systems 24/7 - and the digital layer managing those operations through SAP S4HANA, Azure, Databricks, and analytics tooling like Power BI and SAP Analytics Cloud.
The security model reflects the dual nature of utility operations: operational technology monitoring critical distribution systems around the clock, and enterprise IT supporting business processes across multiple states. The stack includes standard enterprise defenses - multi-factor authentication, firewalls, IPS - layered over HANA databases and cloud infrastructure. As the company expands into renewable natural gas and compressed natural gas solutions, the attack surface extends to newer infrastructure integrations while maintaining legacy systems serving manufacturing plants, commercial facilities, and residential customers built over 160-plus years of operations.
The operational reality is field-distributed: technicians working physical assets, centralized control rooms watching system telemetry, and backend systems processing transactions for utility services that can't go down. Safety protocols are emphasized throughout operations, which in a cybersecurity context translates to managing risk across both IT and OT domains where service interruption has immediate physical consequences. The company's ongoing renewable energy investments suggest infrastructure modernization is active, creating the classic utility challenge of securing evolving systems while maintaining legacy operational continuity.