NSA Says US Companies Losing Ground to Chinese on Cyber Attacks

Rob Joyce, long time NSA cyber executive, former special assistant to the President for cybersecurity, cybersecurity coordinator for the National Security Council and all around cyber guru says that we are in trouble.

He said that Chinese cyber attacks have increased in recent months, targeting critical infrastructure.

He says that he is worried that they are preparing for disruptive operations against that critical infrastructure.

What is he considering critical infrastructure?

• The US Energy sector (like lights, heat, water, etc.)
• Finance (banking)
• Transportation (Planes, trains and automobiles)
• Healthcare (doctors, hospitals and clinics)

Other than that, things are pretty good.

This is, of course, in addition to Chinese theft of intellectual property and espionage.

These comments are in advance of what is likely new government charges of hacking by the Chinese and additional sanctions.

So as long as you don’t drive a car, take public transit, have lights and heat where you live, use a bank, need to see a doctor or use any technology, you have nothing to worry about.

What do you need to do?

If you own or manage a US business, you need to up your cybersecurity game.

What does that mean?  Patching, employee training and alerting are a good beginning – but just a beginning.

Probably over 99% of attacks are targets of opportunity, meaning that the bad guys have no idea who they are attacking.

This includes consumers.  We hear stories regularly of people losing thousands to hackers.  If you have thousands to spare so that you don’t care if you lose a few thousand to a hack, then don’t worry about it.

If that would be a problem, then you need to up your game too.  Learn when not to click and how to protect yourself, patch your computers and phones and take other precautions.

For the Chinese and others, they will keep hacking until they get in.  Somewhere.  Anywhere.

While this may not sound nice, you need to protect yourself so that the hackers attack your neighbor rather than attacking you.  They will attack the easiest target.  If you can help your neighbor too so that the hackers go to a different  town, that is OK, but number one is to protect your information and your money.

If you need assistance, contact us, but please take this seriously.

Information for this post came from Reuters.

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