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During testimony to the House Homeland Security Committee, a panel of security practitioners said the U.S. government needs dramatic updates to its current approach toward cybersecurity to avoid the kind of cyber-espionage campaigns that have recently affected the national security establishment.

Sue Gordon, the former principal executive of national intelligence, likened the state of data protection in the U.S. to the stock market crash of 1929, which was later addressed by the creation of the SEC and requirements for regular financial filings from publicly-listed companies. She cites the SolarWinds hack and the February 5 hack of a water treatment facility in Florida as proof that the U.S. faces a similar moment of reckoning. Chris Krebs, who served as the director of CISA, suggested that a disgruntled employee was “very likely” behind the Florida incident, in which an attacker attempted to change the level of sodium hydroxide in drinking water to a dangerous level for consumption.

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