I recently finished a book by Ted Koppel titled “Lights Out!” You may know him as one of the last true journalists of our time. This is not a fear-mongering doomsday “prophet”. Very well-researched and documented review of the current status of our electric grid. Here are a few excerpts:
“On one level, cyber crime is now so commonplace that we have already absorbed it into the catalogue of daily outrages that we observe, briefly register, and ultimately ignore.”
“Ours has become a largely reactive culture. We are disinclined to anticipate disaster, let alone prepare for it. We wait for bad things to happen and then we assign blame.”
“The weakest links in this system tend to be the smaller companies with the poorest security and maintenance practices.”
“In reality, the ranks of our potential enemies have never been this deep. Our points of vulnerable access are greater than in all of previous human history, yet we have barely begun to focus on the actual danger that cyber warfare presents to our national infrastructure.”
“How does a country’s leadership draw the appropriate line between prudence and paranoia when neither the timing nor the exact nature of a threat to national security can be defined?”
A major role of the COAD during this stage of life is to prepare for a response to a list of 14 potential threats. Success won’t, can’t, be measured until we are struck by one of them.
Practicing what plans are in place (however imperfect they are) is the only way to know where we are missing something. Watch for an upcoming training exercise.
