Critical infrastructureThe cost of bolstering U.S. infrastructure cyber-protection
To achieve security capable of stopping 95 percent of cyber attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure – 100 percent protection is not attainable – experts said the industries involved would have to boost spending to a group total of $46.6 billion from the current $5.3 billion
Cyber attacks on U.S. critical infrastructure could plunge millions into darkness, severely disrupt financial markets and financial transactions, cause major floods as dams holding reservoir water open their gates, kill scores of patients in hospitals, and much more.
What would it take to prevent such catastrophes? A new study on the issue, conducted by the Michigan-based Ponemon Institute and Bloomberg Government, was released last week in Washington.
“The consequences of a successful attack against critical infrastructure makes these cost increases look like chump change,” Lawrence Ponemon, head of the Ponemon Institute, reports the Fort Wayne, Indiana, Journal Gazette in an interview. “It would put people into the Dark Ages.”
The Journal Gazette quotes the report to say that companies, including utilities, banks, and phone carriers would have to spend almost nine times more on cybersecurity to prevent a digital Pearl Harbor.
To achieve security capable of stopping 95 percent of attacks — the Ponemon Institute considers this to be the highest attainable level – the experts surveyed for the study said they would have to boost spending to a group total of $46.6 billion from the current $5.3 billion.
