While our nation fears the possibility of a cyber-attack that would take down our power grid, Ukraine lived through one in late December. The power blackout affected about 1.4 million Ukrainians and was tied to the espionage Trojan known as BlackEnergy. It is suspected that malware was used to cause the power disruption. The Trojan has been tied to Russian attackers resulting in Ukraine’s state security service to blame Russia for the attack.
While it is different from the Ukrainian power grid attack, many of us may remember the Northeast Blackout of 2003 affecting both Canada and the U.S.A.
In this post-Snowden era, information security has become a hot topic among even those who are not in our industry. Sharing your data in a truly secure way has proven difficult. When considering the frequency of data breaches, it is alarming to think that our personal files could be accessed without our permission. When considering the pace at which our data is being released via breaches, will we ever live in a world where we have privacy anymore? Will we ever feel secure about giving our insurance company health records or our banks our financial information?