Cyber Security Threats in the Public and Private Sector

Critical Infrastructure, Key Resources, and Cyber Security
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Critical Infrastructure, Key Resources, and Cyber Security
Despite advancements in homeland security strategies, the United States still faces attacks. For instance, the nation recently suffered a cyber-attack targeting CentraState in New Jersey and Baltimore County Public Schools (BCPS). These intrusions devastated service provision until the stakeholders responded to restore the affected systems.
The CentraState attack occurred on December 30, 2022, disrupting computer systems and reverting the facility to the analog era. Healthcare providers struggled for up to 12 days with manual record-keeping and processing of patient results while redirecting emergency cases to other healthcare units (Kent, 2023). Hackers target these healthcare systems to demand ransom or sell patients’ information to third parties. They find these facilities an easy target due to vulnerabilities such as multiple use and sharing of passwords that leak easily. However, the department IT experts restored the systems, but minimal restructuring occurred to protect the infrastructure from repeat attacks.
Public schools in Baltimore County also suffered an attack on November 2020. It occurred through a phishing email that disrupted the school’s remote learning and website for weeks. A contractor used an unprotected BCPS email leading to the system’s vulnerability (Barr, 2023). The interruption of school learning significantly impacted the achievement ...