Cyberattacks: We Must Act Now

As far back as 2015, former Attorney General Loretta Lynch said that the threat of cyberattacks “…is the thing that keeps me and many of my colleagues in law enforcement up at night.”

This past Monday, April 16, 2018, the United States and British governments presented a first-of-its-kind joint warning about the scope and threat of Russian cyberattacks. As a country, we are simply not prepared for the imminent danger that cyberattacks present towards every facet of our lives. The NYTimes article is an eye-opener [to read the NYTimes article click here].

In 2015, I warned of the perils of cyberattacks on our financial institutions [to read my 2015 article click here]. On July 8, 2015, the New York Stock Exchange was shut down for more than three hours on the same day that the Wall Street Journal and United Airlines experienced troubles with their computer systems.

The United States is not alone in facing these threats. Also in 2015, the Dutch government “…was the victim of a DDoS attack in which servers were flooded with traffic, causing the sites to fail to load. The Dutch government initially believed the problem was technical, but eventually confirmed that it was an attack from the outside. The Dutch government’s sites went down at 10 a.m. on Feb. 10, 2015, and the outage ‘lasted into the evening.’”

These attacks are only increasing in pace and scope. There have been successful attacks on credit agencies, retail stores, and all levels of our government.

I have written and created a cybersecurity manual for the financial industry which, along with governmental and private sector institutions, need to take the necessary steps to defend against cyberattacks from nations like Russia and other adversaries.

“…the fact remains that cyberattacks can and will continue to cause extensive damage and financial losses, leading to paralyzing meltdowns. Collectively, the financial industry, regulatory agencies, and governmental cybersecurity experts must work together to prevent cyber attacks from crippling financial systems. Long-term, independent and/or secure subsystems to the Internet need to be established, especially for the financial industry, the military, and critical governmental agencies, and access to the Internet may need to be limited, as determined by experts and regulators.” [Click here to read my 2015 article].

If elected to Congress, I will be a fierce advocate for greater regulation on the disclosure of cybersecurity breaches. I will push for state governments to secure their critical systems — like elections — and ensure that the private sector is doing its part to secure its data systems. It is necessary to give all of our institutions, private and governmental, the tools and capability to provide a robust defense to these threats.