Nuclear power plants ‘could become more open to cyber attacks’ as police consider cloud storage

Posted by aurelius77 on

The Civil Nuclear Constabulary (CNC), the armed police force tasked with guarding all of Britain’s nuclear plants, has previously refused to use the new storage technology given much of its information is classified as “sensitive”.

However the force has revealed it could start using cloud technology as early as April next year despite a series of high profile information breaches which raised questions about the software’s reliability.

Technology experts warned the move could be “unnecessary” and leave the force more exposed to foreign hackers.

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The CNC guards Britain’s 16 nuclear power stations and accompanies radioactive material being transported – though it does not protect the UK’s nuclear weapons, which are the responsibility of the Ministry of Defence.

Raj Samani, a chief technology officer at Intel Security, said that while all systems had weaknesses using cloud technology could “increase” the risk of breaches from cyber attacks.

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“If you are storing data internally then you have a degree of transparency, you understand your security posture, you understand the controls that you have. By moving it into cloud, you decrease your control and the transparency into what is actually done.”

Darren Thomson, a chief technology officer at Symantec Corporation, warned that the cloud was designed as an “information sharing platform” and had vulnerabilities hackers could target.

“Cyber criminals are very clear – they think about the various cloud sharing and cloud storage applications that are out there,” he warned.

“They have a very, very clear understanding as to where the holes that are out there, and there holes in those systems like any systems.”

Full article: Nuclear power plants ‘could become more open to cyber attacks’ as police consider cloud storage (The Telegraph)

One response to “Nuclear power plants ‘could become more open to cyber attacks’ as police consider cloud storage”

  1. The “fun bit” about it is the total ignorance of the UK government about anything digital. Apart from wasting many millions on failed IT systems they are still trying to completely “computerize” everything official. Mainly using Microsoft products. LOL

    It’s like they don’t understand the basic concepts of digital security, the way the Internet works, and the effects of one itsy bitsy little EMP pulse on their stupid systems.

    Still let them carry on.
    The sooner it all gets brought down, the sooner they will learn.

    Well maybe, as their track record there is less than impressive.
    There again if you employ temps to run the country, what else can you expect.