Experts Advisory: Cyberattack shuts down another critical industry

ALBANY, N.Y. (June 3, 2021) – Less than a month after a ransomware virus shut down one of the nation’s most critical pipelines that serves roughly 45 percent of the east coast’s fuel in the United States, another cyberattack has threatened to disrupt another of the nation’s key distribution networks.

JBS, a meat distributor based in Brazil that accounts for one-fifth of the daily U.S. cattle harvest, was subject to a ransomware attack on Tuesday, June 1 – an event that could disrupt America’s meat markets and raises significant issues about U.S. cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

The attack follows the May 7 ransomware assault that took down the Colonial Pipeline, which resulted in gas shortages, long lines and anxious customers throughout the southeast U.S.

The University has several experts who are available to discuss cyberthreats, cybersecurity and ransomware attacks, as well as what can be done to secure U.S. infrastructure.

UAlbany’s cybersecurity experts include:

• Pradeep K. Atrey, Associate Professor, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences: Atrey, an associate professor of computer science, is an expert on multimedia data analytics, with a focus on security and privacy issues in application areas such as surveillance, social media and cloud computing. He is also co-director of the Albany Lab for Privacy and Security.
• Sanjay Goel, Professor, School of Business: Goel is an expert in information security and digital forensics. His research group at the University is currently engaged in cybersecurity and warfare-related projects including: investigation of computer security threats such as botnets and malware, risk analysis, security policy development and evaluation, security modeling, and development of self-organized complex systems.
• Amir Masoumzadeh, Assistant Professor, College of Engineering and Applied Sciences: An assistant professor of Computer Science, Masoumzadeh’s research interests revolve around information security, privacy, and trust in modern computing systems. His work involves developing theoretical models and mechanisms for specification, verification, analysis and testing of access control policies; their application in online social networks; browser security; privacy-preserving data sharing and mining of complex data such as graphs; privacy-enhancing technologies in domains such as web and location-based services.
• David Turetsky, Professor of Practice, College of Emergency Preparedness, Homeland Security and Cybersecurity: Turetsky has more than 35 years of experience in business, government and law. Immediately before joining UAlbany, he was based in Washington, D.C., where he co-led the cybersecurity, privacy and data protection practice at global law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP. He was inducted last year into the Information Sharing Hall of Fame.
• Benjamin Yankson, Assistant Professor, College of Emergency Preparedness Homeland Security and Cybersecurity: Yankson has more than 15 years of experience in information security technology leadership roles within the education and healthcare industries. His current teaching and research focuses on IoT security, cybersecurity risk management, threat risk assessment (TRA), security auditing/compliance, digital forensics and privacy.