Contract lapse leaves critical infrastructure cybersecurity sensor data unanalyzed at national lab 

Data from sensors that detect threats in critical infrastructure networks is sitting unanalyzed after a government contract expired this weekend, raising risks for operational technology, a program leader at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory told lawmakers Tuesday.

That news arrived at a hearing of a House Homeland Security subcommittee on Stuxnet, the malware that was discovered 15 years ago after it afflicted Iran’s nuclear centrifuges. The hearing focused on operational technology (OT), used to monitor and control physical processes in things like manufacturing or energy plants.

Amid a Department of Homeland Security review of contracts, the arrangement between the laboratory and DHS’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency to support the CyberSentry program expired Sunday, the laboratory program manager Nathaniel Gleason told lawmakers under questioning Tuesday.

CyberSentry is a voluntary program for critical infrastructure owners and operators to monitor threats in both their IT and OT networks.

“We’re looking for threats that haven’t been seen before,” Gleason told California Rep. Eric Swalwell, the top Democrat on the Subcommittee on Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Protection. “We’re looking for threats that exist right now in our infrastructure. One of the great things about the CyberSentry program is that it takes the research and marries it with what is actually happening on the real networks. So we’re not just doing science projects. We’re deploying that technology out in the real world, detecting real threats.”

But the lab can’t legally analyze the data from the CyberSentry sensors without funding from government agencies, and funding agreements were still making their way through DHS processes before the contract expired this weekend, he said.

“One of the most important things is getting visibility into what’s happening on our OT networks,” Gleason said. “We don’t have enough of that. So losing this visibility through this program is a significant loss.”

Spokespeople for the lab and CISA did not immediately provide further details on the size or length of the contract, and CISA did not immediately comment on what would be lost without the lab contract. Other threat hunting contracts have also expired under the Trump administration. 

Tatyana Bolton, executive director of the Operational Technology Cyber Coalition, told the subcommittee there aren’t enough federal OT cybersecurity resources in general.

“We must better resource OT security,” Bolton said. “From addressing the growing tech debt,  hiring cybersecurity experts, to procuring and building updated systems, OT owners and operators don’t have the necessary funding to defend their networks.”

Those owners and operators spend 99 cents of every dollar on physical security and 1 cent on cybersecurity, she said. Reauthorizing the State and Local Cybersecurity Grant Program, due to expire in September, would help with that, Bolton said.

The Trump administration has made large cuts in CISA’s budget since the president took office in January.