COVID-19 made moving agency employees and services off-premises essential. This move, however, has also sparked one of the biggest waves of cybercrime the internet has ever seen. Ransomware attacks have been particularly effective against government agencies and critical infrastructure. The February 2021 attack on the Oldsmar water plant in Florida shows an attempt was made to manipulate the pH in the city’s water to dangerously high acidic levels by increasing sodium hydroxide (lye) by 100 times.
The more recent Colonial Pipeline attack forced operations to a halt for six days and paid out $4.4 million to the attackers. The fallout caused gasoline shortages across the east coast and gave a clear playbook to other bad actors.
With remote operations essential for both public health and infrastructure modernization, how do you guard against these types of attacks? The answer is making Zero Trust the standard for all security operations as called for in the recent Federal Zero Trust Strategy and Cybersecurity Executive Order. Major concepts of Zero Trust for federal civilian agencies are represented in this infographic.
Learn More on What You Can Do To Help Avoid Ransomware Breaches in this webinar:
