Colleagues, the US financial, communications, transportation and especially energy infrastructures are all prime targets for Russian state-sponsored cyber threats. Without energy (power) the other mission-critical infrastructures are rendered useless. US DHD has stated “Russia has attempted to attack targets that include “energy, nuclear, commercial facilities, water, aviation, and critical manufacturing sectors since March 2016”. Russian hackers made their way to machines with access to critical control systems at power plants that were not identified. The hackers never went so far as to sabotage or shut down the computer systems that guide the operations of the plants. A chief suspect is Russia’s Internet Research Agency located in St. Petersburg. While past attempts have come up short we must fully assume that Russia is using quantum cryptography techniques to break into US and European energy systems. Bottom line: The US needs to aggressively move from a defensive an asymmetric and continuously to dispute, destroy and Russian infrastructure while forcing the enemy to divert their offensive resources to protecting their homeland. Lawrence, Cyber Security Defender

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[rm1800Participant]

Recently, it was announced that the White House eliminated the Cybersecurity czar position, which was responsibile for overseeing the security of the nation’s network. The position was no longer seen as necessary. With the ever changing threat landscape and nation-state attacks on government and private sector organizations on the rise, who does the coordinated responsibility and/or oversight fall to? Was the move to indicate that cybersecurity is not important?

[Author]

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