Securing America's Connected Infrastructure Can't Wait
Article/Op-Ed in War on the Rocks
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Dec. 4, 2018
Justin Sherman co-wrote for War on the Rocks about better securing America's connected infrastructure systems.
Electrical grid blackouts, traffic light malfunctions, air traffic control failures, production plants gone haywire — for a while, such events were merely the stuff of Hollywood fantasy. But today, that is no longer the case. Industrial control systems, which command infrastructure and manufacturing processes in plants, traffic systems, and electrical grids, are increasingly “coming online” to interact with networks of small sensors and devices known as the “Internet of Things.” Together, these smaller devices and larger industrial systems form what specialists call the “Industrial Internet of Things,” and its vulnerability poses an enormous risk to national security. While cyber attacks on non-internet-connected critical infrastructure — like Stuxnet — required malicious code to be manually transferred to the victim device, hackers can now launch attacks on infrastructure remotely.