On September 29th, 2011, Douglas Birch reported for the Boston Globe on how U.S. utilities and other crucial industries face an increasing number of cyber break-ins by attackers. U.S. officials have long feared that future wars will include cyber attacks on power plants, pipelines and air traffic control systems. Acting DHS Deputy Undersecretary Greg Schaffer told reporters that "We are connecting equipment that has never been connected before to these global networks. Disgruntled employees, hackers and perhaps foreign governments are knocking on the doors of these systems and there have been intrusions."
According to DHS, the number of private organizations asking for the department's help in protecting their automated control systems rose from 57 last year to 81 so far this year. Furthermore, DHS' Computer Emergency Response Team for industrial systems was deployed six times in 2010, as opposed to once in 2009. In 2011, the Emergency Response Team has already been deployed seven times for attacks on industrial control systems.
The source article can be found here.
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