Human safety in a digital age

摘要

CYBER THREATS TO INDUSTRIAL control systems worldwide, including electric utilities, grow quickly, and the escalating rhetoric threatening these systems proliferates the threat and increases the risk that lives will be lost needlessly. Any public messaging of threats to or of industrial control systems likely increases additional investment in offensive capabilities to achieve or maintain an assumed operational parity -nobody wants to get left behind. If country X can take down Y's electric grid, then we must be able to as well. Rhetoric and specific knowledge of ICS breaches drive a silent weapons and access race threatening everyone's industrial processes such as those in electric utilities. Furthermore, it motivates a "first strike" or "retaliatory strike" mentality - "we must be able to shut off their power first or at least nearly after ours is lost" which requires pre-positioning assets and access into industrial networks. This activity is inherently and unnecessarily risky - even when conducted with defensive intent.