CISA’s Harrell Stresses Resilience to Make Critical Infrastructure Secure

In comments made at Auburn University on Friday, Brian Harrell, assistant director for infrastructure security at DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), emphasized the need for critical infrastructure to be built and managed with resilience in mind so that attacks don’t take down these important systems. “Resilience is key,” Harrell stressed, adding that “we should make the assumption that one day we’re going to be attacked,” whether by natural or manmade forces. “Are we thinking about removing those single points of failure and adding redundancy into our system?,” he asked. Harrell addressed threats to both physical security and cybersecurity, covering insiders and drones, among others. He noted that emerging threats include the vulnerability of and need to update and patch legacy industrial control systems – particularly in the water sector. Harrell also stressed the importance of navigating a hybrid threat landscape, in which physical security and cybersecurity converge, advocating for different parts of organizations to emerge from silos and work together to confront the threats. “We really need to move toward collective defense,” he said. Read the article at Homeland Security Today.