In our day-to-day lives, the country depends on the 16 sectors of critical infrastructure. A disruption to this system, which is operated over the internet, can have significant and catastrophic consequences to our nation.
In the final article in our series on cyber security, we’ll discuss the importance of securing our critical infrastructure and highlight the roles users can play in keeping it safe.
Almost all of our nation’s critical infrastructure is connected to the internet and now is vulnerable to cyber attacks. Some of the sectors include emergency services, energy, health care and public health. Our health care and higher education systems are part of our nation’s critical infrastructure. Recent examples of our vulnerability include our elections and financial infrastructures.
A great approach to protecting our nation’s critical infrastructure includes keeping an open mind when using technology and online services. For example, online phishing attacks are a popular technique used by criminals. By doing so, they can trick users by enticing them to click on malicious links or attachments that can cause harm to the system.
Online criminals also use this technique to steal user credentials such as your work username and password or even your personal bank information. We must all work together and put our knowledge to work to keep our systems safe from cyber attacks. Staying up-to-date on technology news articles is one great way to stay informed.
To test your knowledge with an interactive quiz, please click here.
Here are the topics we covered this month: