Law Enforcement Warned of Threats to Utilities

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued an internal bulletin this week warning that private utility facilities in the United States could be at risk of attacks from disgruntled current and former employees, or even “violent extremists.”

CNN obtained the bulletin, which said that recent employees have been known to use their insider knowledge to disrupt operations at water, gas, and waste facilities.

“Based on the reliable reporting of previous incidents, we have high confidence in our judgment that insiders and their actions pose a significant threat to the infrastructure and information systems of U.S. facilities,” the bulletin reads in part, according to ABC.

DHS spokesman Matthew Chandler told CNN, “While DHS has no specific, credible intelligence of an imminent threat posed to the private sector utilities, several recent incidents highlight the ongoing threat to infrastructure in the utility sectors from insiders and outsiders seeking facility-specific information that might be exploited in an attack.”

An insider threat is the potential that a trusted employee may breech that trust by either revealing sensitive information to outsiders, or that he or she may use the information themselves to harm the physical or cyber-operations of a facility.