Analysis: Are we prepared for a cyberattack?

Angie Pereira, contributor

What a time to be alive – a pandemic, the Afghanistan debacle, Freedom Convoys, China showing signs of invading Taiwan, and now an actual Russian invasion of a sovereign nation that could lead to more significant global consequences for everyone.

I would venture to guess many of us are experiencing a sense of insecurity we have never really felt before. The pandemic has everyone already worn out with mixed emotions, concerns, and even some various types of hardships and now we are sitting in the midst of a world in turmoil on top of turmoil. What a mess!

With a war waged by Russian President Putin on Ukraine, the world is on edge. We can argue back and forth on whether our president is inept and capable of handling his position; whether the sanctions were appropriate; and whether the actions taken should have been taken well in advance of the time they were, but all of that is now in the past and we are sitting in a situation that needs to be carefully monitored and plans need to be in place to protect our citizens from the threats made on us by the Russian leader. For those unaware, we are not talking about just the physical threat of attacks, but cyberattacks.

Take a moment and think about how much of everything in our lives is tech based. I think February 2022 brought a lot of attention to ERCOT and its infrastructure failures. Those were due to poor planning and physical demand versus physical capabilities issues, but do you realize all of those systems are electronic and handled with systems that must be connected via the internet, as well as intranet, connections?

The same is true with water treatment facilities, wastewater plants, and natural gas facilities. What happens if the tech side of our electric grids, natural gas, and water plants go down from a cyberattack? What are ERCOT and all other critical services providers doing to prepare? What are their plans to protect against such attacks and, in the event they fail, what are their contingency plans? I can’t help but wonder if these are things they are adequately prepared for, especially after the poor handling of last winter’s storm by ERCOT that left much of our state without electricity.

Then we have the oil and fuel industry that depends on the same type of systems. Are they prepared for hacks?  What will happen to the lines we do have running and the refineries?  

Those are critical issues we need to know are being secured and working on contingencies in case they are not able to withstand a Russian cyberattack, but our financial institutions need to be prepared as well.

Imagine a hack that takes down our banking industry, the stock market, or the credit/ debit processing systems.  A collapse of credit and debit card processing could cripple our economy.

How many of you have a significant amount of cash on hand? How liquid are your assets? I can tell you, as a retail business person, cash is not generally the primary form of payment.

So, what happens if the banking systems are taken offline? Are banking institutions set up to handle the demand for cash; are they set up with a backup system in place that will allow for each branch to access account information; are their employees trained on all of the backup methods and prepared to switch over quickly, because demand will be high and rapid.

What is the plan by retailers, primarily large retailers like grocery stores, building material retailers, pharmacies, etc. to handle a loss of card payment processing?  

We have all probably experienced temporary issues with a disruption of power or processing systems when we have gone into a store, but this might not be anything like that kind of situation. I am not trying to be an alarmist and I never thought I would be in a situation where these kinds of questions would race through my mind, but the times are like nothing we have ever seen or experienced.

We have had wars, but the dependence we have on technology is more obvious than ever to me right now, as we face the real threats by another world leader to attack our country in a whole new way. Even our ability to communicate is at extreme risk.

We have a home phone, through Spectrum, but guess what, it is digital and dependent on the internet. If that goes down, we lose that communication avenue. The vast majority of our communication is on our cellphones – are those secure? Obviously not, because they get hacked. Now what? Even our postal service and other delivery services are heavily reliant on the internet.  

I have gotten very vague answers from banks, a credit/ debit card processor, and our city regarding their plans to protect their systems and what backup plans they may have – “Our systems are heavily encrypted.”.  Well, a lot of things that are heavily encrypted have been hacked, so that answer does not necessarily instill the greatest of confidence in me.

Putin has blatantly threatened a cyberattack and I must say that I do not consider this narcissistic, deranged, and in my opinion – dangerous, man to be a liar, so I cannot help but implore all our infrastructure providers to be working overtime to protect their systems and put in place their contingencies. This world has taken a turn and nothing seems out of the realm of possibility anymore.  

I would love to hear from Governor Abbott regarding actions he is taking on behalf of our state to protect our citizens and our infrastructure statewide. City officials, like Travis Mitchell – mayor of Kyle, Lee Urbanovsky – mayor of Buda, Gina Fulkerson- mayor of Wimberley, Bill Foulds, Jr. – mayor of Dripping Springs and Jane Hughson – mayor of San Marcos, should make statements letting their citizens know they are taking precautions, especially if their cities are responsible for providing any infrastructure services (electric, water, wastewater, etc.).

Other utility providers need to also make statements letting their customers know they are on top of the situation and working to keep their systems safe and they have contingencies in place to restore any services should there be a failure beyond the normal outages we see due to weather, etc… 

This was not meant to bring alarm to the citizens, but to encourage those tasked with the job of serving us to communicate their readiness. Even our police and emergency services and hospital systems need to be on alert and prepared for anything that could happen.