U.S. Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), chair of the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, warned that America must take steps to strengthen its cybersecurity defenses during a hearing Tuesday on the federal response to the Colonial Pipeline Company cyberattack.
At the hearing, the committee heard testimony from Transportation Security Administrator David Pekoske, Department of Transportation (DOT) Deputy Secretary Polly Trottenberg, and Leslie Gordon, acting director of Homeland Security and Justice at the Government Accountability Office. It was convened to determine how better to protect the nation’s infrastructure.
“Earlier this year, a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline caused the company to shut down its pipeline system that supplies nearly 50 percent of all fuel for the East Coast,” Cantwell said. “This incident underscores the potential consequences any single cyber-attack can have on our daily lives and the need to better manage and bolster cybersecurity for our critical infrastructure.”
Cantwell said failing to harden the country’s energy infrastructure and reduce the country’s vulnerability to cyberattacks threatens to open the country up to foreign hackers.
“The rapid growth in the number and sophistication of cyber-attacks is the alarm bell ringing about the need to immediately bolster the cybersecurity of our critical infrastructure,” she said. “If we don’t, it is only a matter of time before we will see another crippling cyber incident that will have an even more catastrophic impact than we saw with Colonial Pipeline.”
Earlier this year, Chair Cantwell wrote to Biden DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas requesting further action on cybersecurity and announcing Tuesday’s hearing.
The Senator pledged to continue her active pursuit of the issue.
“I was very aggressive with the Trump Administration about this. I plan to be very aggressive with the Biden Administration about this as well,” she said. “This is just not acceptable after the Colonial Pipeline. It wasn’t acceptable before, but now we know how serious the threat can be…There are things that can be done. We should be doing them now.”