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CIA: Cyberattack caused multiple-city blackout

A cyberattack has caused a power blackout in multiple cities outside the United States, the CIA has warned.

The SANS Institute, a computer-security training body, reported the CIA's disclosure on Friday. CIA senior analyst Tom Donahue told a SANS Institute conference on Wednesday in New Orleans that the CIA had evidence of successful cyberattacks against critical national infrastructures outside the United States.

“We have information that cyberattacks have been used to disrupt power equipment in several regions outside the U.S.,” Donahue said. “In at least one case, the disruption caused a power outage affecting multiple cities.”

Donahue added that the CIA does not know who executed the attacks or why but that all of the attacks involved “intrusions through the Internet.” The CIA analyst added that his agency had evidence of blackmail demands following demonstrations of successful intrusions.

Details Here: news.zdnet.com/2100-1009_22-6227090.html?tag=nl.e550

first published week of:   01/28/2008

CIO Influence Is Waning

At the annual meeting in October of the Society for Information Management (SIM), rumor had it that a bombshell was buried in the results of the organization's annual IT management survey. And so there was: The percentage of CIOs and other top IT executives reporting directly to CEOs had fallen dramatically from the year-earlier survey, SIM revealed.

Last year, 45 percent of the business technology executives surveyed said they reported to the CEO; this year, it's just 31 percent. At the same time, the percentage of CIOs reporting to the company CFO has risen, to 29 percent from 25 percent.

The implication? The CIO’s influence is waning. "If the CEO number is going down, clearly [CIOs are] losing traction," says survey principal Jerry Luftman, associate dean of the Graduate Information Systems Programs at the Stevens Institute of Technology. “I’m hoping it’s a blip.”

Another interesting result nestled in the SIM study suggests that IT execs aren’t feeling altogether secure. For the first time in the 27-year history of the survey, execs were asked about “the evolving CIO leadership role,” and they cited it among their top concerns -- No. 10, precisely -- indicating some uncertainty about how and where they fit within their organizations.

Details Here: www.wallstreetandtech.com/showArticle.jhtml;jsessionid=
QP4BKY51IY5ZUQSNDLOSKHSCJUNN2JVN?articleID=204802127

first published week of:   01/21/2008

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