The Arizona Department of Homeland Security is on high alert for Russian cyberattacks, 3 On Your Side has learned. The agency’s director, Tim Roemer, says his team in Arizona’s Cyber Command Center is closely monitoring the situation in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“We have to be prepared for the worst,” Roemer said. “The worst could be a number of things. If a cyberattack was successful against critical infrastructure, against a pipeline, water, energy sector, you could see those types of services go down in a city, in a county, in a state for any number of hours or even days.”
Roemer says cyberattacks could be carried out by the Russian government or criminal organizations based in the country. “I think it’s really important for people to understand that overall the United States is very cyber resilient, and we’re really energy resilient,” Roemer said.
“It’s important for people not to panic. We don’t want the consumer response to be worse than the cyberattack or the emergency itself.” “We are going to remain vigilant and forever vigilant on cyber-attacks.
On one of my first briefings as a new governor, the briefer said we should quit calling it cyber warfare and cyber security because it’s really the future of warfare and security.” The governor said state employees have received training on proper cyber security safety, to prevent the likelihood of a cyber attack. The fear comes nearly a year after Colonial Pipeline was hit with ransomware attacks, which caused massive fuel shortages in parts of the East Coast.
