Members of the House Energy and Commerce Oversight and Investigations subcommittee heard testimony this week calling for an “all-of-society” approach to protecting U.S. critical infrastructure against cyberattacks.
Bruce Walker, president and chief security officer at Alliance for Critical Infrastructure Security, argued at the July 8 subcommittee hearing for a different approach to protection that includes more than effort from the government.
“To successfully protect infrastructure, we must approach this problem differently,” Walker said.
“We must transition to an all-of-society approach that, among other things, uses appropriate Federal capabilities to protect the grid, especially the electric grid throughout the United States that’s rapidly transforming,” he said.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., who chairs the subcommittee, said that “securing our electric infrastructure is an increasingly demanding and complicated challenge, given novel threats from foreign groups and governments and the increased complexity of our critical infrastructure.”
“According to the Director of National Intelligence, Russia will continue to focus on improving its ability to target critical infrastructure in the United States, and China is likely capable of cyber-attacks that could disrupt our infrastructure,” stated Rep. Griffith.
This week’s hearing follows last week’s news from Microsoft, which announced that Chinese government-linked hackers were able to access government agency email accounts in the Microsoft 365 cloud environment.
