Mike Rogers (R -Michigan) serves as the House Intelligence Committee Chairman. On Thursday he addressed cyber threats, and what the government needs to do to protect its networks.
"Well unfortunately, it's not surprising a nation state has been working to insert malware both on critical infrastructure around the country including financial networks land other things," Rogers said. "I can't talk the specifics about any case that you just mentioned. But this is something we need to understand."
"The Russians, the Chinese, we've seen activities from the Iranians -- who are using cyber to try and conduct both destructive and espionage type cyber attacks and the threat is real and it's serious and unfortunately the government hasn't configured itself quite yet to deal with this threat."
"There is a report that came out... maybe about 18 months ago by a company called Mandiet who has now changed, but it put out a public report that showed the nation state of China had successfully penetrated our critical infrastructure."
"And so if China, who doesn't have the same capability of Russia does when it comes to cyber, you can bet that these other nation states are going to find their way into these systems --which is why those of us like me, are saying, we are going to have to deal with this in a real and meaningful way, including allowing the government to share info with our private sectors so they can protect their own networks."
