US infrastructure vulnerable to attack

If it is left to the politicians, the door to the nation's utilities might be left open.

Almost telling terrorists, like in those motel commercials, "We'll leave the light on for you." The ironic part is that a terrorist attack on the nation's infrastructure would mean those lights would go out, along with other catastrophic possibilities. A cybersecurity bill has been largely declawed by Congress, leaving a watered-downed version barely alive. A recent survey showed that security experts have little faith that government regulation will be the answer. Critical infrastructure has been defined as natural gas, electricity, water, roads and highways, air traffic, railroads and the Internet. Operators of America’s vital power, water and manufacturing facilities use industrial control systems (ICS) to manage them, and the security of these systems, increasingly linked with Microsoft Windows and the Internet, is now under intense scrutiny because of growing awareness that they could be attacked and cause massive disruptions.