What Lies Below

Over the past few weeks, the head honchos of some of our biggest oil and gas companies have been pow wow-ing after a cyber-breach compromised their computer communications systems. While nothing catastrophic happened, it highlighted for them (and us) how crucial securing our infrastructure is and just like in the previous fish tale, points out that fundamentals like segmentation of infrastructure will help avoid the spread of this kind of malicious activity. It won’t stop it completely but come on people, let’s at least give the criminals a challenge.

Cyber experts remind us that the nation’s infrastructure of oil, gas, and chemical pipelines — spread across nearly 2.5 million miles of America — is an easy target for hackers. In worst-case scenarios, the consequences would go beyond customer information or disrupted deliveries. We’re talking explosions, spills and fires that could threaten lives and property. Not good.