Warning – Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes – can this book help get management onboard

Richard Clarke and R.P. Eddy’s new book is Warning – Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes. Richard Clarke and R.P. Eddy were both senior members of the White House National Security Council and Richard was the former National Coordinator for Security, Infrastructure Protection and Counter-terrorism. As stated in the book, “There are people among us who can see the future. Often they clamor for our attention, and just as often they are ignored. We are right to discount most soothsayers, but horrible things happen when accurate warnings of specific disasters go unheeded. People die because we fail to distinguish the prophet from the charlatan. This book tries to find those rare people who see the future, who have accurate visions of looming disasters.”

I met Richard Clarke when I was still at EPRI in 2001 and we have stayed in touch since. Chapter 14, “The Engineer; The Internet of Everything” is about cyber security of control systems and IOT. I am honored that Richard has featured me in this chapter. There was a line from the TV show “Madame Secretary” that sums up this chapter and the rest of the book: “Sometimes the story we want to hear the least is the story we need to hear the most.”

Hopefully, this book can reach the appropriate decision makers to help move the needle on cyber securing the control systems in our commercial and industrial infrastructures.

Joe Weiss