On Thursday Oct. 22, 2020, the Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton warned attendees at The Age‘s National Security Summit that they must prepare to counter prolonged and catastrophic cyberattacks on critical infrastructure that could disrupt entire industries.

The message to Australia and the world: “The potential consequences of a successful attack could be catastrophic. A prolonged and widespread failure in the energy sector, for example, could cause knock-on disruptions to other essential systems including medical, transport, traffic management systems, banking services or even the supply of food and groceries.”

Meanwhile, in the United Kingdom, similar cyberthreats to critical infrastructure have emerged. The author of an article in Infosec Gobal writes, “A new director has been appointed to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC, a division of GCHQ), with the outgoing director warning that a ‘national cyber emergency’ due to a ‘category one’ cyber attack on our national infrastructure, which could cause loss of life or severe economic damage, has moved closer to probability. Emergencies have been reported that ‘came close,’ suggesting it feels very much like it’s a matter of ‘when, not if.’”

Closer to home, CNBC reports the FBI announced that election infrastructure was under attack: “Iran and Russia have both obtained information about American voter registrations and are trying to influence the public about the upcoming U.S. presidential election, national security officials said Wednesday night.”

Is a New Trend Developing Regarding Critical Infrastructure?

In the midst of the current COVID-19 pandemic, cyberthreats, ransomware attacks and data breaches are all up around the globe. However, these cyberthreats appear more directed at destruction rather than on criminal activity to make money.

Back in June, this blog asked, “Is a ‘Cyber Pandemic’ Coming?” I included a quote from an article in The Jerusalem (Read more…)

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Lohrmann on Cybersecurity authored by Lohrmann on Cybersecurity. Read the original post at: https://www.govtech.com/blogs/lohrmann-on-cybersecurity/how-vulnerable-is-critical-infrastructure-to-a-cyberattack.html

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