It's no secret that the largest oil pipeline in America, Colonial Pipeline Company, was hacked this past week (Cyberattack prompts major pipeline operator to halt operations). While we know that this is likely to bring attention to the US government and the cyber posture that we have in America. The staggering number of large companies and organizations that have been hacked in the past 2 years creates a bigger question: "Is America's infrastructure prepared to handle a large scale cyber attack?".
In my opinion, America would suffer significantly from a large scale cyber attack as can be seen from multiple incidents that have presented themselves. A large scale attack would weaponize our infrastructure against us and cripple America. Not to mention, we don't have nearly enough cybersecurity professionals!
While many of these larger systems have been in place before cyber attacks became increasingly popular, this does not mean that cybersecurity can't become the emphasis. Cybersecurity should not be the after thought because an attack hasn't happened. Critical infrastructure dealing with power grids, government national security, water, energy, etc should be required to have a cybersecurity posture to operate.
A large number of these potential targets are run by legacy Industrial Control Systems (ICS) that were designed without cybersecurity in mind and are thus extremely vulnerable to cyberattacks. -Edvardas Mikalauskas(Critical US infrastructure can be hacked by anyone)
By targeting the largest mission critical systems that run America infrastructure, we can start to dwindle down the footprint that attackers have.While we won't be able to stop every attack, we can have elements in place that allow organizations to protect themselves and respond accordingly.
View Our Article: Businesses "Think" They Don't Need Cybersecurity...Until They Do!
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