Cyberwarfare and Critical Infrastructure in the 21st Century

Dr. Lamb currently serves as a cyber-security research scientist with Sandia National Laboratories. He is also a Research Assistant Professor affiliated with the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at the University of New Mexico. His current research interests center around industrial control system cybersecurity, particularly in reference to nuclear and solar power, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and their intersections. He has extensive experience designing and developing mission-critical distributed systems for a wide range of government departments and agencies. He has served as chair or contributor to multiple IAEA reports addressing cybersecurity and nuclear power control systems, serves as the lead United States representative to the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in nuclear power cybersecurity, and is currently the chairman emeritus for IEEE Nuclear Power Engineering Committee (NPEC) SC6. He has lead various penetration testing, red teaming, and purple teaming projects for a variety of federal agencies, and is regularly invited to present on the state of advanced cyber threats. Prior to joining Sandia National Laboratories and working with the University of New Mexico, Dr. Lamb served in executive roles and as a principal consultant for a variety of technology companies in the southwest. Dr. Lamb has a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from New Mexico State University, an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of New Mexico, as well as a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering with a focus on Computational Intelligence from the University of New Mexico. He is a TOGAF 9 Certified Enterprise Architect, a GIAC Certified Exploit Researcher and Advanced Penetration Tester (GXPN), a GIAC Certified Penetration Tester (GPEN), and a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) through the International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium. 

Abstract:

Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure are more common than ever. With increasing digitalization of critical infrastructure, this target will continue to become more important as we move into the future. In this talk, I'm going to discuss recent cyberattacks on critical infrastructure, how they were executed, how you can think about them, and why these techniques are going to be even more widely exploited in the future.