Jen Easterly, the director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), delivered a stark warning on Monday, pleading with internet giants like Twitter and Microsoft to reduce their reliance on shoddy software and risky procedures that promote ransomware assaults.
Critical infrastructure in the United States, such as the production of food, oil and gas, hospitals, and schools, as well as the provision of energy and water, is at risk from the attacks.
Easterly compared the current threat of cyber breaches to the Chinese surveillance balloon that garnered so much attention earlier this month as being “much more serious.”
The Chinese government regularly intrudes into our country via cyberspace, but these intrusions hardly ever make national news, according to Easterly on Monday. These intrusions have the potential to cause serious harm to our country, including the theft of our intellectual property and personal information and, more sinisterly, the disruption or destruction of the physical and digital infrastructure on which Americans depend for a variety of services, including power, water, transportation, communication, healthcare, and many others.
Twitter said earlier this month that it would start charging users for text-based multifactor authentication, a service that had previously been provided free of charge.
Notwithstanding these flaws, “radical transparency” advocate Easterly praised businesses for exposing how customers use security features. “The figures are terribly low, but I believe it’s great that they publicized them anyway.”
As a result of default activation, Apple Inc. claims that 95% of its iCloud users have multifactor authentication enabled.
Easterly said that she will advocate for measures to make technology businesses accountable if they subject their users to excessive risk. “The government can also play a role in shifting accountability onto those entities who fail to live up to the duty of care they owe their customers,” she said.
