FBI keeps eye on waterway threats

Mississippi River vulnerabilities would have wide effect

NEW ORLEANS — Giant cranes loading and unloading gargantuan barges. Oil tankers, supply vessels and pipelines serving a vital energy industry. Flood control structures. Chemical plants. Cruise ships. Drinking water sources. All computer-reliant and tied in some way to the Internet. All of them vulnerable to cyber thieves, hackers and terrorists.

Roughly nine months into his job as special agent in charge of the New Orleans office of the FBI, Eric Rommal is keenly aware of the dangers cyber-criminals pose to Mississippi River-related businesses and south Louisiana infrastructure.

“Louisiana is a major cyber vulnerability area,” Rommal said.

“Every time that we have a vessel that travels up or down the Mississippi River there’s a vulnerability: that that vessel or persons on those vessels may in fact be doing harm to our systems,” Rommal said. “And that affects the national economy and affects the entire United States.”

Rommal, accompanied by Matthew Ramey, who supervises the office’s cyber squad, and Drew Watts, an assistant special agent in charge, discussed vulnerable areas and the ways the FBI in New Orleans works to protect them.

COMMERCE

“When it relates to commerce and the economy throughout the United States, oil and gas — it all starts here,” Rommal said. “And when those systems are compromised, it doesn’t just affect Louisiana. It affects the entire nation.”

A cyber disruption of security systems that protect pipelines and refineries “could essentially cripple the oil and gas industry until we could get that system up and running again,” Rommal said.

Energy isn’t the only concern.

“The ports that are along the Mississippi River — many may think of them as an agricultural or a petroleum depot. But what we need to know more about is that each one

AP/GERALD HERBERT An FBI employee works in a computer forensics lab at the FBI field office in New Orleans last month.

AP/GERALD HERBERT A ship passes an oil refinery near the Bonnet Carre Spillway in Norco, La., earlier this year. The FBI monitors networks that affect business, infrastructure and shipping on the Mississippi River.