Late last year the city of Naperville’s website fell victim to a security breach, despite assurances from city officials that Naperville’s website was secure prior to the breach. After being down for about a month, the website gradually became usable. It didn’t really have that much impact on residents, other than little annoyances and frustrations for some. It caused more mayhem for city employees and officials, as the breach was probably intended to do. So I suppose you could say ‘mission accomplished’ for those responsible. It may very well have simply been a practice session for the hackers to see if they do it. Whatever the purpose was, it did confirm to the residents of Naperville, that assurances from city officials carry very little weight, and for the most part city officials have no idea what they are up against in the future, when it comes to criminal cyber security intrusion.
City manager Doug Krieger has also given the residents of Naperville assurance that the unwanted and forced installation of Smart Meters are as secure as, let’s say, the city of Naperville’s website. You have to think that hackers love the challenge of government officials assuring anything when it comes to the safety of personal data.
The fact of the matter is that if companies as large as the Target Corporation and Nieman Marcus can have their cyber-security compromised, then the city of Naperville’s so-called Smart Meters / Smart Grid is easy pickings. It’s not a question of ‘if’ security is breached, it’s a question of ‘when’.
When the city’s website was finally re-established after the security breach, the City of Naperville’s IT department was honored at a city council meeting. You can be sure that the IT departments at Nieman Marcus and Target didn’t get the same standing ovation. Chances are that the person in charge of printing new business cards for new IT team members, replacing those who didn’t get the job done at those corporations, is quite busy printing new cards.
Accountability and reasonable oversight for politicians/bureaucrats has never been a strong point in this country since the 1860’s and the civil war. We now have a system of redundant, overlapping agencies which all have responsibility for the same thing which translates to nobody being held responsible for anything bad and everybody being rewarded with bonuses for perceived good results which usually end up bad when thoroughly examined. No private business could exist for a day under these rules of the road.
You make a good point, Watchdog. And, I don’t trust the City to tell us if and when our personal data is hacked.