This Week in Critical Infrastructure we provide the latest cybersecurity news following the announcement by Equifax of a massive breach exposing financial information of millions of consumers, as well as the latest commentary on cybersecurity, energy, transportation, and extreme weather resilience from industry experts and analysts.
A Cybersecurity Breach at Equifax Left Pretty Much Everyone’s Financial Data Vulnerable
Gillian B. White writes for The Atlantic on the massive consumer information breach announced by Equifax following a breach of their systems from May to July of this year. In total, as many as 143 million records were compromised, potentially revealing personal information including credit records, social security numbers, and driver’s license numbers, all of which present a high potential for identity theft for affected individuals.
Risk Governance: The True Secret Weapon of Cybersecurity
From Security Intelligence, Rick M. Robinson reports on the importance of risk governance in preventing and mitigating cyber attacks. By using policy and governance to prioritize assets and prevent avoidable human error, organizations can achieve greater security gains than possible through merely investing in new and expensive technical protection measures.
An Infrastructure for Charging Electric Vehicles Takes Shape
The Economist provides an analysis on growth and projections for implementing the necessary infrastructure to support expanded use of electric vehicles in the United States and Europe. So far, wealthy countries have seen an expansion in support infrastructure, like charging stations, that has kept pace with increased production and adoption of electric vehicles in the market, a trend likely to continue as more countries announce policies to move away from petroleum-fueled vehicles.
6 Rules for Rebuilding Infrastructure in an Era of ‘Unprecedented’ Weather Events
From WTOP, an article from The Associated Press by Arizona State University’s Thaddeus R. Miller and Mikhail Chester on lessons for infrastructure recovery following Hurricane Harvey. The authors distill their guidance down to six key lessons around the core theme that 20th-century planning principles will not serve the needs of the evolving threat presented by climate change and trends towards more extreme weather events.