America's critical transportation, power, and communications systems remain quite vulnerable and lack funds to remedy that.
The revelation that a computer worm disabled a safety system in a US nuclear power station in January has led to fresh calls for security on electricity grids to be overhauled. Experts say much of the grid's critical infrastructure is too accessible to the virus-ridden public internet.
Power and energy companies are fast becoming a primary target of computer hackers who have managed to penetrate energy control networks as well as administrative systems, according to government cyber-terrorism officials and private security experts.
The computers that control the electric power system around the nation have been probed from the Middle East, and terrorists may have inspected the physical equipment, said experts at a conference on the security of the electric system.
The growing reliance of the electric power industry on information technologies introduces a new class of cyber vulnerability. The principal challenge is to determine how best to counter cyber threats posed by malicious elements, be they terrorists bent on destruction, vandals hacking their way into control or data exchange systems, or even commercial competitors, stealing their adversaries' data or sabotaging their operations.