In the News – This Week in Critical Infrastructure: Week of April 3, 2017

On April 4, 2017, Terence M. Rice, Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) at Merck & CO. testified before the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations of the House Energy and Commerce Committee on the state of cybersecurity in the healthcare industry. Pointing to a 2016 study, Mr. Rice noted that the healthcare industry is the most attacked industry in the United States and that health records are often underreported as a security risk.

Andrew Zaleski of CNBC provides an overview of the MAIN STREET Cybersecurity Act, which updates the Cybersecurity Enhancement Act of 2014 to dedicate resources and set guidelines for small businesses in defense against cyber-attacks. The legislation was partially influenced by a recent study that found half of all small businesses in the United States have been breached by hackers over the past 12 months.

[Editor’s Note: Since publication of this article, the MAIN STREET Cybersecurity Act has been passed out of the Senate Commerce Committee.]

As the first entry in the “Making Cities Work” series from The Conversation, three professors from across Australia discuss critical infrastructure protection. Framed in the aftermath of thunderstorms that caused electrical blackouts across southern Australia in 2016, these experts suggest that Australia should expand its view of critical infrastructure and increase its security efforts at the local level.

Writing for The Christian Science Monitor, Joe Weiss examines the unique threats posed by industrial control systems as targets of cyber attacks. In the wake of cyber weapons like Stuxnet and Aurora, attacks that can cause physical damage have become a high priority among hackers and cyber experts.