DARPA Highlights Critical Infrastructure Security Challenges

An RSAC 2025 panel featuring officials from DARPA, ARPA-I, and ARPA-H discussed the wide-ranging cyber risks to US critical infrastructure—covering sectors such as healthcare, transportation, water, energy, and communications—and the need to leverage automation and AI to detect vulnerabilities, patch systems, and build secure software practices; the session referenced past incidents like the Colonial Pipeline attack and state-sponsored activity (Salt Typhoon) as context and highlighted research programs aimed at automated patching and improved development standards.