Though most experts have long believed that Russia and China pose the greatest threat to the United States’ industries’ cyber controls, James Morrison, a computer scientist with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) assigned to the Houston, Texas, division, said there are currently more than 200 international groups conducting cyber attacks on U.S. installations, “and that number is only climbing.”
“China sees the South China Sea as an extension of their property, so any company that’s trying to deal in that region will find itself under attack from that country,” Morrison added, speaking on a panel at the 12th annual Cybersecurity Conference for the Oil and Natural Gas Industry, held recently in The Woodlands, Texas.
“It’s the same in the Caribbean,” Morrison continued. “There’s a lot of developing countries in the Caribbean that are looking to make money by getting into the oil and gas trade in that area…and they’re targeting you.”
Chad Bailey, who is responsible for information security at Devon Energy and Michael Leigh, practice director for security defense operations at NCC Group joined Morrison on the panel. Ian Thompson, production technician and control room operator on the Magnus Platform in the United Kingdom's zone of the North Sea for BP, moderated the panel.
Read this article in its entirety in the February issue of BIC Magazine.