If U.s. Essential Infrastructure Is Brought Down, Is Your Law Firm Prepared?

• Jurisdiction: United States,Federal
• Citation: Vol. 45 No. 6 Pg. 38
• Publication year: 2022
• Pages: 38
• Year: 2022
• topic: Business of Law

If U.S. Essential Infrastructure is Brought Down, Is Your Law Firm Prepared? Vol. 45 No. 6 Pg. 38 Wyoming Bar Journal December, 2022

by Sharon D. Nelson, Esq John W. Simek and Michael C. Maschke

Can U.S. Critical Infrastructure Really Be Brought Down?

That's the preliminary question. At one time, and not so long ago, we were not overly worried about our susceptibility to a major take-down of U.S. essential infrastructure. But those days are gone.

On October 28, the Washington Post reported that the United States is highly vulnerable to foreign cyberattacks designed to damage the economy, and needs to do far more to defend against them. This is the conclusion of a think tank report from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.

The report concludes that our government has a blind spot when it comes to cyber economic warfare that could "cause a catastrophic strategic surprise" and destabilize U.S. critical infrastructure.

What can we do most effectively? Prepare. And yes, that applies to law firms too.

Convincing Law Firms of the Problem

Convincing law firms about the urgency of this problem would take forever because there is so much evidence, but let's focus on a few nuggets from the Washington Post article.

Moscow has proven its ability to use its surveillance dragnet to select U.S. targets. It's also proven itself very capable of penetrating U.S. critical infrastructure.

You may recall the SolarWinds 2019 hack by Russia, when attackers penetrated an IT company and broke into the networks of its customers, including nine federal agencies and more than 100 companies. How much better do you think Russian's assault...