The mounting fear of cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure has sparked action from the federal government, including imploring these organizations to shore up their cyber defenses and implementing new reporting requirements. 

On this episode of IT Availability Now, host Servaas Verbiest and guest Matt Parsons, Director of Network and Security Product Management at Sungard AS, discuss this growing concern, identify where U.S. critical infrastructure organizations are most exposed and outline measures they should take to protect themselves against possible attacks.

Listen to this full episode to learn:

• What’s most alarming about recent strikes on critical infrastructure, like the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack and the JBS cyberattack  
• Why critical infrastructure organizations are prime targets for bad actors
• What makes critical infrastructure entities so vulnerable, including where they’re typically most exposed
• What critical infrastructure organizations can do to shore up the common vulnerabilities that will have the biggest impact

As Director of Product Field Strategy at Sungard AS, Servaas Verbiest assists businesses and organizations in realizing the full potential of cloud computing by thinking strategically, deploying rapidly, and acting as an ambassador for the cloud ecosystem. While at Sungard AS, Servaas has worked with more than 1,000 unique clients across multiple industries on complex application deployments, re-platforming, public cloud integrations, private cloud deployments, application lifecycle, and hybrid cloud model development.

Matt Parsons is Director of Network and Security Product Management at Sungard AS. Matt’s background and specialty is in network and security architectures, helping enterprises build secure, resilient, and highly available private and public cloud infrastructures.

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