Attack on Ukrainian Power Grid Sparks Long-term Concerns

By Robert M. Lee

Robert M. Lee is a non-resident National Cybersecurity Fellow at New America focusing on policy issues relating to the cyber security of critical infrastructure. Lee formerly served as a Cyber Warfare Operations Officer in the U.S. Air Force. He has performed defense, intelligence, and attack missions in various government organizations including the establishment of a first-of-its-kind ICS/SCADA cyber threat intelligence and intrusion analysis mission. Lee is the CEO and Founder of the industrial (ICS/IIoT) cyber security company Dragos and the author of courses at the SANS Institute.

The taxonomy of cybersecurity often includes alarming declarations on par with acts of war. But cyber campaigns outside of active conflict hardly meet such a coercive threshold. While there are major concerns over the cybersecurity of the nation’s critical infrastructure – the power grid, water treatment plants, transportation hubs, energy production, and even election systems – it is important to add nuance to the discussion. The Cipher Brief’s Levi Maxey spoke with Robert M. Lee, a former Cyber Warfare Operations Officer in the U.S. Air Force who founded Dragos, an industrial cybersecurity company that investigated the allegedly Russian cyber attacks on the Ukrainian power grid, about where cyber operations turn from mere intrusions to disruptive attack with physical consequences and what to look for should nations seek to disrupt the critical assets that their target societies depend on.

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