President Trump’s director of national intelligence issues a 9/11 warning that foreign hackers are already attempting potentially crippling cyberattacks against U.S. infrastructure.
Last week, Dan Coats told an event hosted by the Hudson Institute that the country's digital infrastructure is under attack, citing daily assaults waged by hackers from Russia, China, Iran and North Korea.
“If they decide they don't like how negotiations are going, or sanctions, or they don't believe they're being paid attention to, the question is how much of a toe hold do they have in our national infrastructure to send us a message?” asks Theresa Payton, CEO of cyber security firm Fortalice Solutions.
“This isn't just your credit card that we're talking about here. We're talking about energy. We're talking about health care. We're talking about clean water. We're talking about transportation. These are under attack, pay attention.”
Payton says there have been warning signs for decades, but little response.
“There are things that need to be solved on the application programming, device development, security needs to do a better job,” she says. “But this is also a public-private sector problem to be solved and it's not going to be solved overnight.”