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TSA: New Cybersecurity Directives Issued for US Passenger and Freight Railroad Carriers

 

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) has recently announced a new cybersecurity security directive. The directive is issued in order to improve the cybersecurity of railroad operations and regulate passengers and freight railroad carriers. 
The TSA announcement demonstrates the Biden-Harris Administration’s commitment to strengthening the cybersecurity of U.S critical infrastructure. The security directives will further improve the nation’s railroad operations’ cyber security preparedness and resilience, building on the TSA's work to fortify defenses in other modes of transportation. 

Why are the new directives important?  


The latest measures are taken by US officials following the series of ransomware attacks and hacking incidents in the past years.  

In 2016, San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency was targeted by a ransomware attack, which caused administrators to disable ticketing machines and turnstiles for metro stations for a weekend. 

Last year, the US witnessed the disruptive potential of a cybercrime incident, where a major pipeline company had to halt its operations for days following a ransomware attack. 

The new TSA directive instructs rails companies to report hacking incidents to the Department of Homeland Security, having a strategy in place to prevent a cyberattack from affecting their business operations. 

The directive essentially focuses on creating access controls to prevent unauthorized access to critical systems.  

The operators must ensure that these systems are constantly monitored and detected by policies and procedures. Additionally, they must also make sure that the operating systems, applications, drivers, and firmware of the critical systems are patched and up to date. 

About the new directives, TSA Administrator David Pekoske said, “The nation’s railroads have a long track record of forward-looking efforts to secure their network against cyber threats and have worked hard over the past year to build additional resilience, and this directive, which is focused on performance-based measures, will further these efforts to protect critical transportation infrastructure from attack.” 

“We are encouraged by the significant collaboration between TSA, FRA, CISA and the railroad industry in the development of this security directive.”  

As per Anne Neuberger, a senior White House official, the US officials are also working on cybersecurity measures for the water and healthcare sectors. Alongside regulations for the communications sector, including emergency warning systems are also underway.

China's Draft Cybersecurity Rules Pose Risks For Financial Firms

 

Recently, China has come up with a new cybersecurity proposal for financial firms that could create risks to operations of western organizations by making their sensitive and important data vulnerable to hacking, among other things, the cyber researchers’ group noted. 

This latest regulatory proposal comes at a time when a number of western investment banks and asset managers are expanding their business in China, either by setting up wholly-owned firms or by taking a bigger share in existing joint ventures. 

Following the new policy, on April 29, the China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) released the draft Administrative Measures for the Management of Network Security in the Securities and Futures Industry and also offered a month-long public consultation on the proposals. 

According to the draft rules, it will become mandatory for investment banks, asset managers, and futures companies willing to invest in China to share data with CSRC, allow regulator-led testing and help set up a centralized data backup center. 

The draft also states that CSRC could conduct penetration-testing -- a simulated cyber attack against the operational system -- and system scanning on securities, futures, and fund firms. 

"The real risks to firms due to the potentially disruptive nature of penetration testing and the sensitivity of testing results. Testing systems and applications without operational context could create significant disruption to firm operations,” ASIFMA noted. 

The institution has laid out a number of reasons for sharing data with the center, but the cyber researchers’ group is concerned passing on sensitive data will make companies in the sector more vulnerable to "hackers and other bad actors". 

Moreover, a number of international banks and asset managers are also not backing the plan or setting up a centralized data backup center. 

"This not only poses huge risks to all core institutions and operating institutions on an individual basis but also brings significant systemic risks for the sector in China and globally given the inter-connectedness of the global financial sector if the data is compromised or leaked," the ASIFMA letter said. 

However, at present, the government did not set any timeline for the final issuance of the rules or for their implementation.