Rick Ledgett, deputy director at the National Security Agency, has said that industrial control systems and other critical infrastructure assets are vulnerable to cyber attacks as infrastructure providers fail to address security risks, the Army News Service reported Thursday.
David Vergun writes Ledgett made the remarks in a keynote speech to the Joint Service Academy Cyber Security Summit hosted by Palo Alto Networks and the Army Cyber Institute at the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y.
“You don’t need to cause physical harm to affect critical infrastructure assets,” said Ledgett, who is also NSA’s senior civilian lead.
He cited a cyber attack on Ukraine’s power grid in December that resulted in a power failure as an example.
Ledgett predicted Internet-of-Things-based devices worldwide to increase from approximately 6.4 billion this year to approximately 20.8 billion by 2020 and that industry should work to address emerging network vulnerabilities with the launch of new software and hardware platforms.
