Cyber attacks on the rise; lawmakers want guidance for solutions
(The Center Square) – State lawmakers sought input Wednesday from multiple panels of experts to learn about the evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats as cyber threats and crime have surged across the country.
Legislators on the House Cybersecurity, Data Analytics and I.T. Committee aimed to use the hearing to better inform state-level protections for the infrastructure of Illinois, along with addressing manufacturing and other economic risks.
Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly said that the state saw about 33,000 cyber crimes in 2025.
“According to the FBI there were almost 33,000 cyber complaints in Illinois last year with a reported loss of $535 million. And that’s up $56 million from the year before. Illinois ranks fifth in the nation and reported cybercrime,” Kelly said.
The director also said the largest long-term cyber threat to Illinois and the nation is foreign adversaries looking to attack the U.S. through digital means.
“China, Russia, Iran, North Korea. These actors are continuing in conducting espionage, establishing persistent access to networks and they continue to position themselves for potential future disruptive attacks,” Kelly said.
One way foreign actors have impacted U.S. residents has been through cyber attacks such as a recent attack on 30 municipal water systems in Minnesota, which the FBI said it was investigating.
That attack, and others across the country, have been attributed by some preliminary investigations as having been conducted by Iran.
Chief Information Security Officer for the nation’s largest water and wastewater utility American Water, Bill Bowers, told the committee the infrastructure attacks, which often bring taxpayer costs, show that basic security has become less reliable as AI improves.
“These were not sophisticated attacks. These were generally attackers found control systems, right? OT systems, ICS systems connected directly to the internet with either weak or their default passwords which could have been prevented,” Bowers said. “So, the use of AI, it used to be a skilled attacker had to come looking for a system in order to find it and then try to exploit it. It’s no longer the case.”
The group discussed potential new regulations that would require municipal water system employees to regularly test and report on their systems based on a national baseline, ensure there are strong security measures in place, and put in place reporting standards for cyber security breaches before incidents happen in Illinois.
Additionally, the panel discussed ways to prepare for a cyber attack, including being able to bypass computer systems and operating the system manually.
“One of the processes we have at all of our plant plants is ensuring we could operate the plant manually,” Bowers said. “That is a test that we perform quite often as a loss of scale, a test where we are ensuring that our plant operators can walk into the plant and manually turn the knobs and understand what they are looking at. with the loss of their computer systems.”
The lawmakers said the hearing would be informative for a number of bills in the works, which may come up for votes in the General Assembly’s fall veto session, which runs Nov. 17-19, and Dec. 1-3.
Slight Chance Showers And Thunderstorms
