Foreign actors are waging a digital war on the backbone of the U.S. economy. The SolarWinds cyberattack, perpetrated by Russian hackers and undiscovered until nine months after it occurred, was a digital intrusion that had no precedent in our nation’s history. The hackers wormed their way into key federal agencies including the departments of State, Energy, Defense, Treasury and Justice.
The federal government was far from the only victim of SolarWinds. In Arizona, Ohio, California and Texas, the hackers targeted everything from state hospitals to prominent universities. The intruders were inside these computer systems for months — and we didn’t know the scale of the damage until long after the intrusion. With a different backdrop, cyber espionage of this magnitude would merit around-the-clock coverage.
But this attack was discovered amid social upheaval around a fraught presidential election and a raging pandemic. A computer breach of the nation’s most sensitive agencies in that crowded context took a backseat.
Cyber threats are not aimed solely at large companies; smaller operations face danger, too. Recently, Brandon Wales, executive director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), voiced concern about potential vulnerabilities: “[Smaller communications entities] should not assume that they’re … not in the crosshairs of a more sophisticated nation state.” Wales noted that smaller companies could give malicious cyber actors a foothold in the nation’s larger critical service operations.
An influx of federal funding for new broadband networks across the country is headed toward local governments, but this won’t significantly decr ..
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