On May 7 2021, Colonial Pipeline briefly stopped all operations due to a ransomware attack against the major U.S. distributor of fuel and gas across the East Coast, in which cyber attackers infiltrated Colonial’s operational technologies network that controls and monitors “the flow of fuel from refineries and tank farms into Colonial’s pipeline and from Colonial’s pipeline into the tanks and transportation facilities belonging to suppliers and distributors.”
Following the data breach, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) released several guidelines to help mitigate risks of future data security incidences within the natural gas industry.
