Troubled waters
By Ken Showers, Managing Editor
Updated 3:38 AM CST, Wed November 12, 2025
Despite ISC East next week, the news feels a little slow lately, but that won’t stop me from digging into a few of this week’s biggest security topics.
Like the hack of the U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO) late last week. I know it’s passé to keep harping on about cybersecurity but between the “reorganization” of the CISA and funding cuts, a major breach occurring during the government shutdown seemed more than inevitable. In fact, I wonder what took so long?
I guess it’s hardly a U.S.-centric problem in that regard. Australia’s spy chief today was discussing how government sponsored Chinese hackers are probing his country’s telecom and infrastructure networks. I think we can agree that that’s not really news but the frequency of it is almost as troubling as the success these hackers see. We saw the havoc wrought on the American health system courtesy of a few data breaches; a major government office would be chaos. Social Security, anyone?
Or electrical grids? Or air traffic control towers? We’ve all seen in the past few weeks how vulnerable we can be courtesy of our own dysfunction. The implications of a bad actor with ill intent are thoughts worth contemplating. Heck, even gaining access to a few key bridge controls could be devastating. Are those things air gapped? It’s honestly been a bad year for bridges.
Be sure to check out the blog of Editor Cory Harris next week as he takes to the floor at ISC East as part of our coverage of the event.
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