Over the last few years, foreign cyber espionage has become a top priority due to growth in the black market for the sale and purchase of information. From 2010 to 2011, the Industrial Control Systems Cyber Emergency Response Team (ICS-CERT) reported a 400% increase in network vulnerabilities, and within the last six months, reported more than 20,000 instances of unauthorized internet access to control systems. Lisa Kaiser, operations lead of Cyber Security Implementation (CSI) for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, gave a presentation at OPC Technology Summit 2012 on network issues and cyber security attacks. In this article, Automation.com Editor Billy Lydon discusses a variety of cyber activities that have affected the U.S. since 2007, explains how the U.S. government is playing catch-up, and shares two videos from Kaiser's presentation that demonstrate cyber hacking on U.S. industrial systems.
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