Imagine this: the power grid has been hacked by a nation-state and has catapulted us back to the Stone Age. No power, water, fuel, online communications or banking. No, this isn’t a story out of a Michael Crichton novel. In 2018, a dire warning from former British Secretary of Defense, Gavin Williamson, indicated Britain’s energy infrastructure had been spied on by Russia. He predicted countless deaths would result if their power grid was ever crippled.
The critical infrastructure space is hardly an emerging topic in terms of cybersecurity. Case in point — in the spring of 2021, the Colonial Pipeline was hacked, leaving consumers from Texas up to New Jersey and New York vulnerable without a basic need: gas. Thankfully, the issue was resolved, but the implications of cyberattacks on critical infrastructure were exemplified by this incident.