Slashdot Mirror
Germany Sees Big Rise in Security Problems Affecting Infrastructure (reuters.com)
Germany has experienced a big increase in the number of security incidents hitting critical infrastructure such as power grids and water suppliers, the BSI cybersecurity agency said on Sunday, adding however that they were not all due to hacking. From a report: The Welt am Sonntag weekly had reported on Sunday that Germany had learned of 157 hacker attacks on critical infrastructure companies in the second half of 2018 compared to 145 attacks in the whole of the previous year. "The number of reports of IT security incidents has increased but it is not to be equated with the number of cyber attacks," tweeted the BSI in response to the newspaper report.
https://linux.slashdot.org/story/17/11/24/2043253/linux-pioneer-munich-confirms-switch-to-windows-10
So disconnect essential infrastructure from networks and run them the old-fashioned way with people. if you can't afford to have a hacked you never should be connecting it to a network in the first place. Duh. It might be more expensive but is retroactively Justified. That's what money is for solving problems if you cut the quality of solutions to save money, you doing it ass backwards.
The thing with West and later German infrastructure was to keep investing in infrastructure.
Stop spending due to spending on welfare and infrastructure starts to not work as well as it once did.
West Germany could spend a lot of the best infrastructure to show it was better than anything Communism could offer.
Germany could spend on infrastructure as its still had a lot of money to invest in large projects.
Now that money has to look after generations of people rather that the best infrastructure.
Stop investing and spending and that once great infrastructure starts to need more maintenance and more investment.
Giving alway new welfare payments to many random people will not provide the needed investment in infrastructure every year.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
I think this increase in incidents may very well be caused primarily by the introduction of new laws (called "KRITIS" in Germany, based on EU-Regulation 2008/114/EG) that require companies (from an increasing number of industry sectors) to report security incidents.
In the past, the default reaction of companies to security events has always been to be silent about them and tell no one in fear of bad PR. Now, there is a legal risk involved with that strategy, so more events get reported.