Protecting critical infrastructure such as power and water supplies from cyberattacks is a global issue which requires governments to work together, regardless of any political tensions, because systems and processes which are supposed to keep us safe are dangerously out of date Eugene Kaspersky, CEO of Kaspersky Lab has warned.
Kaspersky urged governments to do more to combat the threats hackers pose to power-grids, turbines, reactors and other essential facilities.
“Critical infrastructure; it’s about national security, it’s about global security in a global economy. So the leading role, it’s got to be done by government because they’re responsible for the national security and the national economy. They collect taxes, so they have to be responsible for that,” he said, citing the importance of designing “cyber strategy to protect the infrastructure in order to make it immune”.
Kaspersky pointed out how, when it comes to ensuring buildings are physically secure, there are regulations which must be adhered to, but that there isn’t anything of this kind for cybersecurity at all, not even for critical infrastructure.
“Every building, it has regulation and penalties. When companies design cyber systems, they do it as they want to do, there’s no regulation at all,” he said, adding “one of the important steps for governments is to introduce any kind of regulation for cyber systems to manage critical infrastructure, because now, it’s zero”.
He added: “What’s going on with cyber in an industrial environment is a mess”. “Actually, what’s going on at a political level, sometimes it doesn’t reflect on a typical level. For example, cyber police, from Russia, from the United States, from Europol, they’re cooperating on a daily basis, they don’t have political problems,” he said.
“They face the same enemy, so they’re working together and the political issues, they’re left behind”, Kaspersky added.
