How Vulnerable is U.S. Infrastructure to a Major Cyber Attack?”. I wanted to point this one out for a couple of reasons.
First, it’s a decent high level treatment of the topic. Even though it starts out with the doomsday scenario, alternate viewpoints are included such as the Bruce Schneier quote “Honestly, I think the threat is overblown”. Yes, it does talk about Maroochy Shire and other incidents that we’ve all heard discussed a thousand times but I’m not sure how you can do a piece like this one for a broad audience and not mention them.
Secondly, (spoiler alert) there’s a slight twist at the end of the article that I found interesting.
“Of course, more computing technology in the grid allows for more potential attacks, but it could also mean a more robust and nimble defense.”
It goes on to talk about the major DOS attacks, how the Internet survived, and allude to the fact that a smart grid infrastructure might possess similar flexibility and redundancy that could make it resistant to attack. Extending that analogy, surviving an attack is one thing but what about all the other security issues on the Internet?
I admit being a little late in the discussion but is the “more technology = inherently more secure” one of the arguments for smart grid technology? I’m not convinced but I’ll certainly be listening.]]>