LANSING ? The Michigan Cyber Range ? which announced its first site at Eastern Michigan University ? will help the state become a center for protecting the nation’s cyber infrastructure, the state?s cyber security officer said in an interview.
?It?s about protecting the critical infrastructure,? said Dan Lohrmann, the state of Michigan?s Chief Information Security Officer. ?We?ll grow this in Michigan, we?ll train people. The vision is to have this site operational this fall.?
Lohrmann said the Michigan Cyber Range is the first ?cyber security firing range? of its kind in the country, which will make Michigan a center for protecting the nation?s critical computer infrastructure. Since computers and computerized devices have become the brains of everything from refrigerators, to automobiles, to smart grids ? and those devices have been connected to the Internet ? all have become the target for hackers. Training cyber security professionals to keep these bad guys out is what the Michigan Cyber Range is all about.
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?At the state, we are constantly under cyber threat,? Lohrmann said. ?We have literally thousands of attacks a day and millions each month. A lot of them are script kiddies and automated probes of our networks. Over the years, we?ve battled hacktivism, people who didn?t like some or our policies, trying to break in.?
Other techniques used include phishing attempts, sequel injection, spearphishing,? he said. ?They try to get state employees to click on links that then give them access to the state computer network. We have people trying to download keyloggers. We have tools that show much of this traffic going out of China or Russia.?
Lohrmann said Michigan works with multi-state groups that share IP addresses of hackers, which then can be blocked. But the targets are always moving.
?It?s like whack a mole; Once we block one server, they go after another one.?
A few years back, there were several thousand phishing emails that got through the state?s filters. About 200 state employees clicked on them, sending messages to Asia and downloading malware.
?We found the software and blocked those IP addresses,? he said. ?We had to shut down everyone who clicked. We cut them off the network and those machines had to be rebuilt.
?We were able to show in a lab, the malware not only took over the machine, it made the machine part of a botnet,? Lohrmann said. ?This particular malware had a keylogger and remote control via a bot. No sensitive data was lost.?
What will really help Lohrmann and his team in this ongoing battle with cyber attackers is $94 million that has been budgeted over the next two years ? starting Oct. 1 ? to upgrade Michigan?s state computers and network. Lohrmann said there are dozens of systems 20 and 30 years old. Upgrades will require large financial investments over the next few years. So $94 million will help.
?Actually, I think it will help a lot,? he said. ?But it is an ongoing process. It will take several years to get it done. Some systems would cost $100 million over five years to replace. It would take well over $100 million to upgrade all the systems to level they really need to be.?
He said Florida and several other states have made the necessary upgrades, and the price tag has been very high.
?The reality is the technology is always moving,? he said. ?Take the cloud; we didn?t have that five years ago. It?s understandable that state employees are not happy with computers made in 1995.Our goal is to be more innovative and efficient, as well as secure. We owe that to the people of Michigan.?
