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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, JuNE 12, 2021
OPINION
editor@dailyastorian.com
KARI BORGEN
Publisher
DERRICK DePLEDGE
Editor
Founded in 1873
SHANNON ARLINT
Circulation Manager
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Production Manager
CARL EARL
Systems Manager
GUEST COLUMN
Prepare for digital storms
T
hink of the hazards threatened
by ransomware as akin to those
caused by the Great Coastal Gale
of 2007.
Lights go out and furnaces shut
down. Communications networks go
silent. Gasoline stays in the ground, or in
tanks outside the region. Banking grinds
to a slow walk, as bank-
ers return to the days of
handwritten ledgers.
Residents of the
North Coast are accus-
tomed to thinking about
natural disasters, from
the inevitable Casca-
MIKE
dia Subduction Zone
FRANCIS
earthquake to tsunami to
wildfires. But the same
kinds of disruptions to daily life can
occur when criminals invade computer
networks and hold them hostage, as
we’ve seen in the last several weeks.
● In May, criminals crippled the net-
work of Colonial Pipeline, not releasing
their hold until the gas pipeline company
paid a reported $4.4 million in crypto-
currency. While authorities later recov-
ered much of that money, gas shortages
occurred on the East Coast while oil
supplies were stalled by the attack.
● Also in May, JBS, the world’s larg-
est meatpacking company, halted all cat-
tle slaughtering operations in the United
States and Australia after a ransomware
attack.
● Earlier in June, cyberthieves dis-
rupted operations of the Massachu-
setts Steamship Authority, disrupting
ferry service to Nantucket and Martha’s
Vineyard.
Cyberattacks, like natural disasters,
can shut bridges, communications net-
works and power plants. As the recent
spate of ransomware episodes shows,
they are a jarring reminder that much of
the nation’s critical infrastructure is con-
trolled by private companies, like banks,
investor-owned utilities, food producers,
hospitals and health care systems. And
in the 21st century, any organization is
vulnerable to a cyberattack.
Unlike the Cascadia Subduction Zone
catastrophe that scientists anticipate,
cyberattack disruptions aren’t inevita-
ble, said Pat Massey, the Seattle-based
regional director for the federal Cyber-
security and Infrastructure Security
Agency.
“Everyone is at risk of a cyberse-
curity threat,” Massey said in a phone
interview. “Ransomware has woken a lot
of people up.”
But Massey said he is guardedly opti-
mistic that growing awareness will lead
to growing readiness, as it has with plan-
ning for the Cascadia earthquake. He
said the best protection against disrup-
tion of digital systems is what he calls
Jenny Kane/AP Photo
Ransomware attacks are on the rise.
RESOURCES
● Public agencies are invited to join the Multistate Information Sharing and Analysis
Center (MS-ISAC) www.cisecurity.org/ms-isac/. The nonprofit center, which is free to join,
offers threat maps, secure information portals, educational materials and even cyberse-
curity exercises.
● The FBI’s Portland office described the rising incidences of malware and digital intru-
sions, including a link for reporting such hacks. That link is www.ic3.gov.
● The FBI recently issued its 2020 Internet Crime Report www.ic3.gov/Media/PDF/Annu-
alReport/2020_IC3Report.pdf. The report notes that Oregon ranked 25th in the nation in
terms of the number of internet crime victims, with 6,817 victims who suffered aggre-
gate losses of more than $38 million.
● The regional office of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA)
offers advisory, educational and emergency communications resources www.cisa.gov/
region-10
● The Oregon Department of Justice oversees the Oregon Titan Fusion Center, which
studies, investigates, prosecutes and shares information about digital attacks. justice.
oregon.gov/ortitan/
“basic cyberhygiene.” By that he means
using up-to-date antivirus software,
using strong passwords and multifactor
authentication and avoiding opening or
clicking on suspicious emails and links.
He also encourages any public
agency, from tiny school districts to
county governments, port authorities
and cities, to join the Multistate Infor-
mation Sharing Analysis Center, a clear-
inghouse for cybersecurity information,
including conducting exercises and pro-
viding guidance on how to respond to
attacks. It is free for any public entity to
join, but in the lower Columbia River
region, few agencies are on the member
rolls. They should be.
“Local officials, especially, need to
start running tabletops and other scenar-
ios, and get emergency plans in place,”
said Charles Jennings, of Portland, a
senior fellow at the Atlantic Council and
co-author of the digital security book
“The Hundredth Window: Protecting
Your Privacy and Security In the Age of
the Internet.”
“They need to make certain their sys-
tems for the delivery of water and elec-
tricity are checked and double-checked,
and maintained at a high level, even if
new federal infrastructure dollars are not
forthcoming,” Jennings said in an email.
“And Astoria would be a great place
for rainwater barrels also — something
every Oregonian should have.”
Cybersecurity generally and ran-
somware in particular have increas-
ingly become the focus for federal law
enforcement, starting with the White
House, which announced this month
President Joe Biden will confront Rus-
sian President Vladimir Putin about the
prevalence of ransomware attacks that
originate in Russia.
“Ransomware is a big issue for the
FBI,” said Beth Anne Steele, spokes-
woman for the FBI’s Portland office, in
a phone interview. The agency is work-
ing to educate people and organizations
about how to keep their networks safe,
and to share information with the agency
and with one another when attacks
occur.
Attackers are relentless and well-re-
sourced, said Dave Nevin, a computer
science professor who leads the Oregon
Research & Teaching Security Opera-
tions Center at Oregon State University.
Nevin, who said by email he was speak-
ing in his personal capacity, said organi-
zations are increasingly gaining access
to resources of their own. But security
begins at the ground level.
“As we’ve seen from Colonial Pipe-
line and others, cyberattacks can be
costly and damaging to a business. They
can result in loss of revenue, inability to
deliver key services, theft and reputa-
tion damage,” he wrote. “But organiza-
tions can do things to limit that damage:
practice good cyberhygiene and plan
for the inevitability that, at some point
in time, you will be the victim of a data
breach. Having a good disaster recov-
ery plan that addresses ransomware and
other cyberattacks is important. Detec-
tion is key: organizations have been able
to thwart potential ransomware attacks
by early detection — the less time an
attacker is inside your network (because
it will happen) the better.”
Astoria City Manager Brett Estes said
the response to the Great Coastal Gale
of 2007 demonstrated Astorians’ resil-
ience and resourcefulness. He said city
information technology staffers worked
with the manager of Safeway, for exam-
ple, to figure out how to get gasoline
pumping from the store’s underground
tanks.
The gale also showed that “we don’t
know how tethered we are” until sys-
tems are disrupted, Estes said. It’s a les-
son echoed by many after the gale.
“The biggest takeaway was that the
city needed a truly multihazard emer-
gency response plan,” Jay Raskin, who
was a city councilor in 2007, told The
Astorian on the 10-year anniversary of
the storm. “Our emergency response had
been geared for a Cascadia earthquake
and tsunami with the idea if we prepared
for that we would cover the other haz-
ards,” Raskin said. “The storm taught us
that different hazards require different
responses.”
The same is true of digital storms,
which can break suddenly and
catastrophically.
Mike Francis is a longtime Oregon
journalist who has extensively covered
military and veterans issues. He resides
on Astoria’s South Slope.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Remove bias
egarding Oregon House Bill 2505:
This bill will help remove bias within
the foster care system.
As a former foster youth, going through
the system was one of the hardest things. I
did not go through racial bias, but I did go
through ageism — it’s a real thing.
I was 14 when I went into care with my
brother and sister, who were preteens. No
one wanted a group of teens. After being
removed, we had to wait at the Depart-
ment of Human Services building for two
to three hours, due to finding us a home.
We ended up in an emergency place-
ment. If these people did not speak up
and take us, we would have been split up
and put into different homes. I could not
believe how hard it was for someone who
wanted to have teens in their house.
This bill will help remove this from
child welfare. The system needs to treat
the kiddos the same. No matter how old
they are, or what the color of their skin is.
I ended up getting to talk to state Sen.
Betsy Johnson. She is a kind-hearted per-
son. She took time out of her weekend to
listen to why this bill means so much to me.
I am so glad that we have her sup-
port on this. Thank you, Sen. Johnson, it
means the world to Oregon Foster Youth
Connection.
We hope you will support the bill, too.
Be the change for foster youth. Take a
stand.
JADE VOLLNER
Astoria
R
Report card
his past week, I had the privilege to
substitute teach for a kindergarten
class in Seaside, and one in Warrenton. In
T
one instance the kids went for a “full” day
of education and in the other, the students
spent time in a cohort half-day program.
This two-day experience coming at the
end of a full year of COVID-19-induced
instruction is quite illuminating. If some
intrepid doctoral candidate in primary edu-
cation needs a thesis topic, I can see a
bounty in this year’s youngsters.
The obvious obstacle for this past
year’s crop of kindergartners is the mask.
It’s hard enough to understand the average
5-year-old’s broken English. Slap a mask
on a kid, and their often rambling words
become nearly undetectable.
Add in a handful of students complain-
ing of an untied shoe, in need of the use of
the restroom or that a student had just been
whacked over the head with a pizza stick,
and you can appreciate what the nation is
working with.
When masked youngsters are let loose
in public it is worth investigating. From
my own experience, I can tell Clatsop
County taxpayers that your money has
been well spent on the youngest of masked
students.
There has been a concentration on the
basics for these kiddies and, for the most
part, the students have done well. I only
have 33 years in education, but I can see
that next year’s first graders might survive
because our kindergarten teachers expertly
taught the basics.
MATT JANES
Jeffers Garden
Ample resources
ith the abundance of road levy funds
paid by rural property owners,
there are ample resources to improve the
(mostly) county-owned Pipeline Route for
an emergency route for east Clatsop Coun-
W
ty’s U.S. Highway 30.
Instead, the county wishes to upgrade
the public works facility outside the tsu-
nami inundation zone with Road District
No. 1 funds. The catch is: public works is
much more than roads and bridges.
Our surveyor, the Public Land Cor-
ner Preservation Fund, parks, the West-
port Sewer Service District and the county
engineer are components of the public
works campus. How does a road fund end
up funding these county offices that have
little or nothing to do with roads?
Why is a levy not presented to the vot-
ers for this major capital improvement,
as we have been for new schools, or the
jail? Why are major planning strategies
to remodel the county’s zoning happen-
ing during COVID-19, with little public
engagement?
To move public works to Warrenton
Fiber’s sort yard would require a zone
exception, forest to industrial. The for-
mer plan was to site public works in the
North Coast Business Park, which is zoned
industrial.
The Road District No. 1 has become
a multimillion-dollar cash cow for the
county, and is currently being treated more
like a real estate investment account than
a public service for maintaining roads and
bridges.
It’s budget season. I encourage you to
look at where your money is going and
why. Developing an emergency route for
Highway 30, not a palace for public works
in a forest zone, seems a more dire need
for road funds.
LINDA BRIM
Astoria