First the power grid, now banks under attack

U.S. banks are now under attack from hackers that may be Iranian. Website access to several major banks has been inhibited by the attacks, and now bankers are reaching out to the government for help. The strange thing is major businesses oppose the government passing laws that force them to get their cybersecurity up to par.

With our important infrastructure already under attack, and banks now following suite, it’s only a matter of time before some major cyber attack accomplishes something meaningful (or they already could have and we don’t know it just yet). Rather than forcing companies to release all the information related to the attacks as to better prevent them, these businesses are asking the government for help. The same sort help that they helped block late last year.

Read also:

• NSA’s cybersecurity program to protect critical infrastructure revealed
• Incorporating Best Practices Into a Modernized Physical Security
• A New Public-private Cyber Partnership Aims to Spread Basic Security
• Electrical grid attacked, cybersecurity more important now than ever

Whatever the solution to our cybersecurity woes may be, it’s high time we did something about it. Anything. The US may be one of the more advanced nations when it comes to having the tools and knowledge for defense and attack in the cyber realm, but we certainly aren’t the best. We stand to lose far too much to have cybersecurity be on the back burner.

We need new cybersecurity legislation, and we need it last year. Hopefully Obama’s executive order will help stem the flood of cyber attacks. You only need to suceed once if you’re the attacker, and it’s amazing we have accomplished so little when organizations are actively attacking us. It’s a matter of time before a group is successful at getting important information from a cyber attack with our current strategy, and the consequences of that can range from merely annoying to disastrous.

By Skyler Frink