Is China’s Threat to U.S. Critical Infrastructure Overblown?
Scythe CEO argues China is more likely to attack U.S. military than “random U.S. infrastructure” if war were to break out.
According to Bank Info Security, concerns over potential Chinese cyberattacks on U.S. critical infrastructure have grown, but the actual threat may be overstated, said Scythe founder and CEO Bryson Bort.
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In the event of war between China and Taiwan, Bort expects the Chinese would target weak points in America’s kinetic military force rather than engaging in large-scale cyberattacks against random U.S. infrastructure. Nonetheless, defending U.S. critical infrastructure is tough due to an uneven distribution of resources and a lack of resilience in equipment not originally designed to counter cyberattacks (see: DHS Unveils Critical Infrastructure Cybersecurity Guidance).
“The U.S. government has been putting out declassified information to asset owners suggesting that the Chinese are ramping up those efforts,” Bort said. “But it’s more likely that there are other weak points in U.S. military force projection that the Chinese are going to try to exploit versus, ‘I want to take out a random power company in Indiana.'”