The State Of Illinois Electrical Grid

Since the onset of the first packet switching event that many believe to be beginning of the internet, no other technology besides the printing press has ever transformed the ability to deliver information. Although the internet is used by a large percentage of the civilized world, few Americans realize how vital cyberspace is to our national infrastructure. Today, we are faced with even more threats although it has been a recognized problem since 2009, when President Barrack Obama said “The cyber threat is one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation. It’s also clear that we’re not as prepared as we should be, as a government or as a country (Obama, 2009).” Every industry that operates in the United States is dependent on the internet for some aspect of their business. Commerce, transportation, financial institutions, military, as well as industrial control systems are all interconnected. This interconnectedness has created vulnerabilities within their infrastructure that have increasingly become targets of terrorists, script kiddies, foreign governments and hackers of all types.

The cybersecurity simulation rounds in UMUC?s Cybersecurity Master 's degree capstone are an integral part of the learning program. The simulation rounds expose students to real world incidents in a cyber representation of the US. In this environment students are provided a chance to gain experience in a setting where mistakes are far less impactful than those made in the real world. The environment includes five critical infrastructure sectors; DTL Power, Federal Government, Hytema Defense, Mistral Bank and Avisitel Telecom. The control decisions made by each have the potential to impact other groups operating within the environment.

With the Age of technology advancing, the more cyber-attacks are occurring. Many of our information are on computer networks and we like to think that our information is well protect. But how protected is our information? Cybersecurity bills are introduced in Congress almost every year. These bills regularly imply to permit organizations and the government to divulge dangerous information for a “cybersecurity” reason to secure and safeguard against attacks against networks and computer systems.

Introduction: - for my research project, I would like to explore about the cyber security measures. Cybersecurity covers the fundamental concepts underlying the construction of secure systems from the hardware to the software to the human computer interface, with the use of cryptography to secure interactions. These concepts are easily augmented with hands-on exercises involving relevant tools and techniques. We have different types of computer related crimes, cybercrimes, computer related offenses, federal approaches defenses. The information resources management has the technical matters for which IT are widely known. Cyber resources and cyber power as well as cyber security. We have spent a lot of time talking about many different high level critical infrastructure protection concepts we have general rule stayed away from cyber security explaining the ins and out of how the NIPP and NRF work together to ensure that we can live our daily live in relative comfort.

The Internet, as we all know, has rapidly spread around since its commercialization in the 1990s. It is evident that cybersecurity attacks are not going anywhere, and that government will continue to remain a target. In addition, the Internet of Things (IoT) growth will lead to more devices being connected to the networks. Therefore, with technology moving forward and hackers being more motivated as ever, the government finds itself struggling to keep up with effective cybersecurity measures and with filling up the designated positions in the Cybersecurity department.

The intricate and connect power grid system that is linked and stretched out to over 200,000 of high-tension transmission lines, which supplies the power we depend so heavily upon. What exactly does it take to keep this system working reliably? In a control room On August 14th, 2003 in New Albany, New York the board that monitors the grid throughout New York with bulbs that light up when a transmission line connection had been lost was light up all over. With a system that is almost always reliable what could cause this chaos

Sophisticated hackers have expanded their threat matrix to include cyber-attacks on the computer systems used to operate the world’s pipelines. Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (“SCADA”) systems are increasingly subject to targeted attacks. Cyber-attacks can be perpetrated over the Internet from anywhere in the world and are capable of disrupting safe pipeline operation causing spills, explosions, or fires. The 2008 explosion on the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline in Turkey was reportedly caused by a cyber-attack.

Our society today is ever more dependent upon electricity in all aspects of life. Keeping the power infrastructure throughout the United States secure and functioning properly should be considered a high priority for both private sector and government. Lacking properly functioning power caused by an outage has widespread impact not just on common conveniences being unavailable but also on critical areas such as emergency services, transportation, water distribution, communication and food production and storage.

The United States is under attack. To be exact, the nation’s power grid is under attack in the form of cyber warfare. On May 21st, 2013 Congressmen Edward J. Markey and Henry A Waxman published a report that provided the findings from information that they had requested from over 150 utility companies (of which 60% responded). More than a dozen utilities reported “daily, constant, or frequent attempted cyber-attacks” (Markey & Waxman) with one utility reporting that they have about 10,000 attempted attacks per month!

The idea is that if a virus could do that much damage to Iran’s nuclear power program; what could a virus or attack do to our less secure electric power grids. Furthermore, examples of how an attack could occur and the amount of damage that could be caused. Finally, the author offers insight into how you can be vigilant with personal security online.

Within the realm of open source information, a trove of resources are readily available delineating locations of individual power plants, major electrical lines, and sub stations serving the United States and Illinois. Most apparent is not necessarily the ease of access to information, but how piecing together the varied, disparate data can be used to create a picture that

Privacy threats are currently the biggest threat to National Security today. The threats are not only concerning to the government, however. An alarming 92% of Americans are concerned that the power grid may be vulnerable to a cyber-attack (Denholm). Although this is a more recent development to the cyber threats we have experienced, this is not the first time that privacy threats have stepped into the limelight as people are forced to watch their every online move.

According to Palmer (2010) The U.S. Defense Department's Quadrennial Defense Review emphasized the expanding hazard posed by cyber-warfare/terrorism on communication systems and space-based investigation. "On any given day, there are as many as 8 million Department of Defense telecommunications tools and computers in use in 78 countries using thousands of support and war-fighting applications. The number of possible susceptibilities, therefore, is staggering," the Review

For the possibility of an uptick in cyber incidents, the federal government has developed a number of tools to help

As global security continues to grow exponentially in response to threats of cyber terrorism, the field of computer security continues to proliferate into many adjacent socioeconomic and technologically-based areas of society. Gartner Group, a leading market research in the enterprise IT industry, has stated that the worldwide market for security software will reach $21B in 2011, rising to $15.8B in 2015 (Karjalainen, Siponen, 2011). This rapid growth of computer security is also driving the development of entirely new patents in the areas of cryptography, enterprise security management strategies, and extensive support for more advanced programming features for securing enterprise networks (Albrechtsen, 2007). The pace of development in this market is accelerating as the sophistication and variety of threats continues to also exponentially escalate (Liang, Xue, 2010).