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The Russians Are Here, But Maintain Perspective

The Russians Are Here, But Maintain Perspective

Created: Thursday, July 26, 2018 - 13:55
Categories:
Cybersecurity

On Monday, as reported by WaterISAC, experts from DHS hosted a public briefing not only confirming the presence of Russian government sponsored cyber threat actors lurking within U.S. critical infrastructure networks, but that they have the ability to throw switches at any time and have refrained thus far. While this information is disconcerting, it is prudent to keep knowledge of this threat in perspective. Industry experts from Dragos and Nozomi Networks point out that while localized outages are a very real possibility, such as what happened in the Ukraine in 2015 and 2016, there is no indication that Russian actors have the access needed to cause a complete grid blackout. The Russians are indeed here, and our awareness and understanding has never been greater as we vigilantly protect our critical infrastructure networks from these and other advanced threats. Several years ago, the FS-ISAC (Financial Services Information Sharing & Analysis Center) adjusted its Security Threat Level degrees to remove the “Low” level in favor of “Guarded,” with the premise that Guarded is the new accepted Low. Today, advanced cyber threats to critical infrastructure are on-going and now part of the “new normal.” Utility Dive, Nozomi Networks.