United States Interior Department’s Bureau of Reclamation has awarded two US companies $45 million worth contracts to protect 600 dams spread across 17 states from Cyber Attacks. The names of the two companies are Booz Allen Hamilton and Spry Methods, a Virginia based start-up.
The contract covers technical and professional service offerings to protect the dams digital infrastructure from cyber threats. This includes monitoring and mitigation programs, compliance with the Federal Information Security Management Act, total security of dam’s industrial control systems or ICS and updating Reclamation’s Information System Security Officer about the latest on the progress.
Lori James, Spry Method’s Chief Cybersecurity Officer has confirmed the contract bagged by her company and said that Spry will look forward to supporting the DOI and Reclamation by providing streamlined security arrangements produced by her company’s efficient and useful methodologies.
Representatives from Booz Allen also confirmed the news but declined to comment further due to reasons.
If history is taken into account, Iranian Hackers managed to break into the network of the dam’s accounting system in 2016 to take over a sluice gate controlling water flow. Luckily, the hackers gained access to the Bowman Avenue Dam, NY which was out of service instead of the every green Arthur R Bowman Dam in Oregon, thus avoiding a massive apocalypse.
Some state-sponsored hackers are nowadays looking to disrupt the digital infrastructure in the United States. This includes the ones used by power utility facilities, dams, Nuclear systems.
Thus, Trump administration under the leadership of Donald Trump has decided to secure the defenses of its critical infrastructure with the assistance of qualified security companies.
Probably the latest contract is a part of its vision to make ‘America Greatest’.
