ANCHORAGE, Alaska \u2014 Alyeska Pipeline Service Company\u2019s chief information officer said his team fights off about 22 million cyberattacks per day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bill Rosetti said that at the Anchorage headquarters for the trans-Alaska pipeline, his team is kept busy by mass, automated attacks \u2014 often from servers overseas, Alaska\u2019s Energy Desk reported Wednesday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt can be 6 or 7 million some days and 45 million the next,\u201d Rosetti said. \u201cI wish I could tell you why it changes that way, but I really don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rosetti said that Alyeska has never been breached, but the challenge is growing. The rate of cyberattacks has roughly doubled in the last five years, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe idea here is that we are looking for things to be normal,\u201d Rosetti said. \u201cAnd anything that\u2019s not normal is something that needs to be investigated.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rosetti said a successful cyberattack could interrupt the flow of oil down the pipeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a warning that sophisticated cyberattackers have targeted the U.S. energy sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jim Guinn leads the company Accenture\u2019s cybersecurity business for the energy, utilities, chemicals and metals and mining industries. Guinn said that as far as he\u2019s concerned, the potential consequences of a major cyberattack should be the No. 1 thing keeping energy executives up at night \u2014 if it isn\u2019t already.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt could be anywhere from a spill, to loss of the command of the plant itself, to explosion, to loss of life,\u201d he said. \u201cIt would be no different than losing a platform in the Gulf of Mexico or in the North Sea.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Guinn couldn\u2019t speak specifically to the cyber threat facing the trans-Alaska pipeline. But he said the risk isn\u2019t going away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe reality is, as long as these assets are attached to networks and they are managed the way that they are today, there is a real threat that they could be manipulated for malintent,\u201d Guinn said. \u201cIt\u2019s just the unfortunate world that we live in.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Alyeska Pipeline Service Company\u2019s chief information officer said that Alyeska has never been breached, but the challenge is growing. The rate of cyberattacks has roughly doubled in the last five years, he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":37811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":0,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"9":{"categories":["cyber"],"primary_category":"cyber"}}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1304],"class_list":["post-12467","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"5SAJ5JEHH5G5XGHSL3G4VGA64E","arc_canonical_url":"\/critical-infrastructure\/2018\/03\/16\/trans-alaska-pipeline-fights-22-million-cyberattacks-per-day\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n